Dawn of a New Beginning
by Harold Genhi
Summary: What happened to Nadja? What was the Shadow Broker's gift? Who else didn't make it off of the Normandy? So many questions that will soon be answered with the new calming story of Dawn of the New Beginning. Life is finally starting for the child.
1. Prologue

The warm winds of Rannoch swept softly over the tall Savanna grass on the side of a burnt orange hillside. The grass made sweet harmonious rustles and swaying that almost made the grass appear to be delicate dancers moving to the sound of a soft played orchestra. The glittering white stone house of quarian design rested softly on the top of the hill.

Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy and a renowned hero among every faction and star gazer alike slept softly in his bed, the window open, brining in the warm morning air. The delicate fabrics of the curtains swayed in the breeze, bending the light slightly from the orange sun that shone brilliantly in the sky. Beside the human laid the delicate form of his wife, his happily-ever-after, a quarian that had actually demonstrated the bravery and the will of the quarian people at the same time showing the delicate emotions that the quarians had hidden behind their visors.

It had been almost four years since the largest and most gruesome battle the galaxy had ever seen had struck. With the renewed peace and a stronger sense of unity, the terminus systems had finally sat down and began listening to the alien Council as they showed the same courtesy. Tali'Zorah had been given the opportunity to become the leading ambassador for the quarian people at the citadel, even offered a seat with the council, but she had refused and had gone to live her retirement with the best and most loving person she had ever met.

The soft breeze managed to flare the light blankets on the bed brining it up to her noise, tickling it softly. Her eyes slowly rose as the light from Rannoch caused her to shield her eyes and smile; she enjoyed the warmth of the morning air on her face and hands. She had grown accustomed to the feelings that most quarians could have dreamed of longer than the rest of the quarians who had found different ways of making themselves relax with soothing skincare products created from the plants and animals that roamed the planet.

Tali looked around the room with sleepy, squinty eyes, scanning the art and the flow of the curves. Her eyes finally made it to Shepard, whose back slowly rose as he slept through the glare of the morning sun. She almost laughed from seeing his shirtless body sprawled across the bed. He had kicked the blankets from the bed and only the blue and green striped boxers were keeping him protected.

She slid her hand across his back, tracing the scars and feeling the thickness of calloused holes. He had been through so much. She eventually made her hands up to his shoulder where a series of cuts and gashes led to shining pieces of stone and crystal that had embedded itself into his skin. The doctors could have removed it, but he had refused any treatment for the scars. He claimed it was for memories and Tali understood.

Shepard finally began to stir from the gentle touches of his wife's hand caressing his back. He turned his head slowly to her, opening one eye just enough to see her face. He chuckled slightly, the smile stretching across his face as he saw her sitting on her knees, leaning towards him. He jolted his body just enough to flop him onto his back so it was his chest facing to the ceiling.

She looked at the scars that had extended from his back up to his chest along with only the few that had managed to stay on his chest. She crawled forwards placing both her hands on either side of him, sliding her face along his cheek before she connected her lips to his. Her eyes softly opened from the feeling that never got old to her. A sudden thud, followed by a series of small impacts, brought Shepard's attention to the door where he saw the small delicate frame of his daughter run into the room. She leaped onto the bed, her arms outstretched and her cheeks glittering with the rosy red of excitement.

The twinkle in her eye from the morning sun was almost enough to drive the bright glow out from her eyes, but she continued to shine. Tali wrapped her arms around the child and rolled around in a playful frenzy. Nadja'Zorah Shepard sat on her mouth's chest laughing with glee and happiness. She had grown to the age of seven and she had impressed everyone with her quick recovery rate and her amazing immune system that even Shepard challenged as a joke.

Shepard rolled onto his side and ran his hand through the soft purple hair of his daughter. They had kept it cut short to keep the tradition of the quarian hair intact though some had already began to let it grow out into long flowing waves.

Shala had become head of the quarian home colony that had finally grown into an actual city instead of a mass campsite. The Conclave had also stayed in tact, keeping the quarian government going strong. The Admiralty board had almost been completely shattered from the fighting and had been replaced by a new body of government that Tali and Shepard had been asked to be a part of which they accepted under the condition of simply being advisors and not actual officials. Shala understood their reasoning and happily accepted their change in her plan, knowing they just wanted to rest and enjoy their lives.

Giggling had filled the house that sat on the hill as Tali's hands slid across the soft stomach of her daughter causing squeals of glee and laughter to erupt. Shepard had slid to the bottom of the bed, attacking her feet with his many fingers. Nadja thrashed with laughter, trying hopelessly to escape the grip of her parents. They let her go and she jumped from the bed, flushed in the face, her hair a mess. She stared at them with wild eyes before she ran out of the room and back to her room.

Tali and John held each other close as they marveled at their creation. They had fought so hard and so long for this and now it was real and there was nothing except for a few rogue pirates left in the galaxy. Tali looked into Shepard's eyes again. They slowly closed as they began to kiss again, the feelings of excitement and happiness, again, flooding her body.

"EWWW!" echoed a disturbingly exaggerated voice from the hall. "Mom and Dad are kissing again! That's sick!"

"You'll understand someday!" Shepard yelled, not breaking his gaze from the sight in front of him. Tali played with his hands, trying to contain the laughter that had cracked a smile on her face causing her to bite her lip defensively.

"Ya Right! I will never understand that!" Nadja mocked.

Shepard and Tali could only laugh as they began kissing again. More sickening noise came from the hallway before they heard the feet runaway again.

"I still can't believe we made it this far…" Tali whispered into Shepard's lips where hers hovered close to.

"It was all because of you…" Shepard whispered back.

"I'm glad that we can have this new beginning… a better life…"

"Dawn of a new beginning…" Shepard whispered as he looked out the window at the soft light of dawn breaking through the small wispy cloud cover. The warmth of his wife warmed him as much as the sense of home warmed his soul. He truly felt he was home and in the right time of place this time. He had deserved it.


	2. Chapter 1: Progress

Shepard stretched his back as he rose from the bed; the small crystal fragments in his arm flickered and shimmered on his shoulder from the morning air. Tali sat up in the bed and looked with sleepy eyes at the glitter. She always wondered why Shepard didn't let the doctors remove the fragments, but she found that they weren't causing any harm.

She had many chances during the nights when they were alone to rub her hands across his damp arm only to find that it was smooth without even a sign of roughness. The relaxing years that they managed to live had almost taken no toll on their physical form, but Tali was surprised to find that Shepard's eyes had grown considerably happier and his attitude became so loving and warming that she felt that she had met another Shepard that she loved even more.

Shepard arched his back causing it to pop slightly. He groaned as he cocked his head over his shoulder to see Tali's tired eyes and morning smile staring at him.

"What?" Shepard smiled back to her.

She smiled, showing her teeth as her gaze fell back down to the bed, strangely her face burned even after all these years of being with him.

"Just enjoying the lighting…" She told the blankets.

Shepard laughed and pulled out a traditional outfit and tied it around himself. The sun looked bright so Shepard flipped the hood up and waved to his wife before he stepped out into the hallway of his house. Quick movements at the end of the hallway made him smile as it hid when I noticed he was looking its direction. He bolstered his defensives and pretended that nothing was waiting for him at the end of the hallway. He even tried to make as much noise as he could with his bare feet. His toes were brought down hard making a slap and a thud to tell the assailant his location.

His vision had turned and focused on the doorway that the shadow had jumped into, smiling wildly as he kept his head straight looking clueless. A loud yell and the dark form of a small girl leaped from the dark shadows of the room. Shepard quickly turned with his agile form and snagged his daughter's body and hoisting her into the air. She squealed with delight as he tossed her slightly before catching her and sweeping her to the floor.

"What are you up to little one?" Shepard asked kneeling to see his daughter at eye level.

She put her hand up to her face and leaped back towards the shadows, but she stopped part way there. She turned and performed a magnificent spin, striking a strong pose.

"I am Archangel! Fighting for justice from the shadows and fear of my enemies!" She declared happily.

Shepard shook his head as his palm found its way up to his face.

"You've been hanging out with Garrus to much Nadja…" Shepard laughed.

"Gary has so many stories!" She hopped with excitement to Shepard's legs. "He tells me so much of his adventures and his scar… He tells me you were always there, starting new adventures for him." Nadja stared at her father.

Shepard stared down at his daughter. He realized that he had tried to keep those stories hush-hush until she was older to understand. She appeared to be old enough now.

"Maybe later sweetie." He promised her giving her a sly smile. "I'll try to tell you everything of all of me and Mom's adventures."

Nadja's mouth opened with excitement as she jumped around with excitement. She ran into the dark room, the automatic lighting actually turning on this time. Shepard walked into the doorway and leaned against it as he observed her frantically grabbing her bags and over-robes. She turned and stared at her father quizzically, wondering why he was watching her pack her bag with assortments of data pads and discs.

She looked away and placed a few more things in her bag slowly. She finished putting the last thing in her bag as slowly as she could, her eyes slowly rising to Shepard, her face red.

"What are you staring at?" she squealed, embarrassed.

"I'm just making sure you have everything you need…" Shepard laughed.

Nadja's face became brighter as the smile broke through her face. She sealed the pack and made her way out the door. Shepard stood in the way, watching as she became angrier with him for not moving.

"Dad…" She whined in her innocent tone. "You're going to make me late…"

"What do you say?" Shepard hinted.

Nadja dropped her jaw as her head fell back with annoyance. She sighed heavily as her eyes rolled in feigned annoyance.

"I love you… dad," she stated, exaggerated the word 'dad'.

"I love you too honey…" Shepard kissed the top of her head and stepped aside. "Say bye to Mom!" He called after her.

"Bye Mom!" She hollered.

"And say hi to Xel for me, you know that boy you have a-"

"Daaaad…"she yelled as the front door closed.

Shepard laughed to himself as he picked up the toys and ship models sitting around the room. He picked up a dirty robe to throw in with the wash when he caught site of a data pad she had forgotten. He sighed to himself as he opened it to see how important it was. **Frigate Class Engineering Report**. The due date was today. He shook the pad in thought as he lifted himself up from the floor.

"What's that?" Shepard looked over to the doorway to see Tali standing there with her arms folded, the robes hanging loosely around her shapely figure. He smiled as he handed Tali the data pad and watched her reaction. She just smiled and shook her head. "You better run this down to her…" Shepard started for the door. "And Shepard… don't embarrass her this time… it annoys her." Tali smiled.

"I'll try my best dear." Shepard laughed as he walked out the door onto the warm ground.

The air was fresh with the sunrise and the low wispy clouds that quickly moved and dissipated in the orange-red glow of the star. The haze from the arid planet only made the scenery of the small town made him smile almost every time he walked out the door. The planet reminded him of an early Earth, just in the first stages of life, much like he felt he was in the early stages of living his life. The air was dry, but the heat was comforting from the cool night. He looked down the hill towards the small outcropping town that had been set up, a large sweeping arched school sat near the edge closest to him, kids running around before the final call.

He made his way down the hillside to the edge of the fence. He looked around the crowds of kids and mayhem of young children to try to find Nadja's face, one of the few kids that could live outside of their suits. She caught sight of her sitting next to a young suited boy, her legs were sitting parallel to each other but her knees were pressed together, her face was tinged with embarrassment. He quickly realized that she had not made her presence known to the boy.

The boy, who Shepard recognized as Xel, leaned back, placing his hand down onto Nadja's. He almost laughed as he saw Nadja's eyes explode with surprise and Xel look quickly over to whom he had touched. They stared into each other's eyes for a few seconds before Xel's mouthpiece blinked with him talking. He was glad to see her start talking to him, but her eyes had broken away as she stared at the dirt and sweeping her hand through her hair.

Shepard made his way around the fence until he found the small gate to inside of the schoolyard. The kids stared at him as he made his way into the yard. Nadja was too absorbed in Xel talking to notice her father walking towards him. She almost jumped out of her robes as she felt Xel's hand grab a hold of hers. She picked it up and smiled as he placed both his hands around it.

"… What if I feel the same way about you…?" Xel stated, once Shepard came into earshot.

"I-I-I don't know what to say…" her spine shivered as he slid his one hand down hers.

"Hey lovebird. You forgot your report." Shepard held it out.

Nadja's hand retreated from Xel's hand and went into her hair nervously. Shepard watched as her eyes darted nervously around as her eyes tried to look for something to focus on, but her eyes kept darting to her father who just stood with his hand outstretched, her engineering home work in front of her. Her hand quickly flew out of her hair and caught the data pad.

"Thanks dad…" she murmured.

"He's your dad?" Xel coughed, staring at the legend in front of him.

"Well my name is Nadja'Zorah Shepard… you know… Shepard…" She poked her head in the direction of her dad.

Xel looked from Nadja to John rather quickly, his heart raced and his mind was a fury of amazement. The smile under his visor would have clearly been visible to anyone who was paying attention.

John leaned back and was very impressed with the maturity of his daughter. For the longest time she had ran around the school telling everyone who her dad was and anytime he showed up, the hugs and kisses were numerous and many. He was surprised at how mature she had grown at the age of seven. He knew she was special, special to him, special to the galaxy. He leaned back in reflection of his retirement, the warm days inside of the house, holding his family, no danger around.

He had made it, but at what cost? He didn't try to think about it. He put his hand against his pocket and felt a strange elongated object. He hadn't worn this particular robe for quite some time for its old age. He reached inside and grabbed the engraved black object. He looked down as he did so, his heart suddenly stopping and the chatter of boys and girls around him stopped.

He felt lost in the memories that this object held, and a promise that was given to him by someone far mysterious than he could have ever hoped to imagine. He looked up to Nadja, the true and eventual owner of the object. He had decided to give it to her when she was older and more mature and it appeared that today it was destined to arrive. He flipped it nervously in his hand, each groove and indent being traced by his fingers. He raised his hand to give it to her, but an intercom blasted the tardy warning.

Nadja snapped her mind from the object that strangely fascinated her and looked at the door that had grown into a mob of people converging on the narrow staircase. She stood up and hugged her father before she ran off with Xel. Shepard's mind was just able to wander off and admire the cute child couple. He knew it wouldn't last, not at her age, but it was innocent interpretation as to what love was. He looked back at the dark object and felt the silence fall over him, like he was looking back into the pit of darkness that he had just escaped just barely.

He managed to turn his hand around and divert his gaze as he slid the object back into his pocket while he made his way back to the house on the hill. He kept his hand outstretched, feeling the soft bristles of the seedpods waiting to be carried away by a large animal. A warm wind blew through the grass, causing waves of glory to shower the surface and shape the hills, making it appear to be fluid.

Once at the top of the hill, Shepard actually had a view of the dark clouds that were forming out at sea. Judging by the intensity and darkness of the clouds, he knew it was going to be an interesting one. Shepard had always been a fan of storms, especially the lightning aspect of it. He had even claimed to be a storm worshipper as a passing joke among some of his friends. He just loved the sound, taste, sight, and feel of rain on his skin as a thunderous beat echoed inside of his chest. It made him feel alive and as if he was a part of the storm. The cracks of lightning that broke the night sky also inspired him to see how lightning rods could be used to obtain higher power reserves. It was still an ongoing experiment.

Shepard just managed to look up when he saw that Tali had been standing at the top of the stairs, watching him the whole time. Shepard smiled as he closed the last half of stairs on her.

"Why are you so pale?" Tali locked him in an embrace, obviously concerned as to his well-being.

Shepard pulled the item from his pocket and reminded Tali of it. The look on her face quickly dropped and an inner fear came back into her softly illuminated eyes. She knew what the item was. She was afraid of what it did… that is, if it did anything at all. She looked back up to Shepard, her eyes telling him the hurt and the worry of it.

"John…" Tali started.

"She needs to know…" He fumbled with the "gift".

Tali lowered her eyes knowingly as she looked at Shepard's feet, her mind buzzing with questions and worry. She waned someone to answer her, but she knew Shepard was looking for the same person to ask, one that had been lost to the darkness from the Reaper War. She felt fingers touch her chin and lift her head to his. The eyes that stared at her showed her the bravery that she had fallen in love with. She could feel that warmth and light that he always would cast in even the darkest of hours. They slowly brought their heads together, their eyes slowly closing as their heads turned just enough for a confident and reassuring kiss. Their noses brushed past each other's cheeks sending pulses of love through their faces. Tali's face began to burn from the intimacy of the situation; it always burned even after all of these years.

Tali's arms wrapped around Shepard's neck and loosely overlapped each other behind him. Her hips softly began to sway to no music as Shepard's hands gripped her sides. Tali stopped kissing Shepard to giggle at what he was doing.

"Wouldn't you prefer music?" Tali questioned, still dancing.

"We do have music…" Shepard chuckled to her as he started to spin slowly around, keeping the rocking going.

"It's been some time since I've danced…" Tali admitted.

"We better fix that now shouldn't we?" Shepard whispered into her ear, his breath was warm as his nose brushed past her neck.

She shivered from the tickle before she cocked her head back to look into Shepard's eyes. He quickly spun her around and wrapped his arms around her waist and kept the slow dance going. Tali smiled as she looked down at her own hips as they swayed inside of Shepard's legs. She could feel the beat of the music that Shepard had been dancing to; she matched the beat. She loved when their hearts started beating together in a harmonious beat; hers was soft and quick while John's was strong and slow.

One of her arms fell from holding onto Shepard's arms that held her close and fell to his leg. She rubbed it slowly, feeling the fabric on top of the strong muscles that sat beneath it. She leaned her head back where Shepard again locked his lips to hers, listening to their music, feeling their music.

"Get a room you two!" yelled a familiar voice from the small path that had formed from the light traffic.

They slowly stopped kissing each other, staring into each other's eyes before they looked at Garrus. Shepard's arms stayed firmly wrapped around Tali's waist as she waved to Garrus. He walked up the stairs, his casual outfit almost making Shepard laugh.

"Hey… I got this cheap. I thought it made me look more- err –professional." Garrus shot back humorously.

"So how are you handling things?" Shepard asked in a far more serious tone.

Garrus's eyes perked up only slightly to the sudden change of mood. He knew it had been years after the incident and he had moved on, but the pain still had hit deep inside of him.

"I'm doing good… I just can't…" Garrus stopped as his fist gripped as the words were caught in a lump in his throat. "I can't believe that she didn't make it off Shepard…" Garrus pained.

"We lost a lot of good people that day… so how are you and Keli'Fromli getting together." Shepard changed the mood.

Garrus's mood instantly broke from his sadness at losing Miranda to the final destruction of the Normandy. He had lived almost three years in sadness and grief when he saw her name on the list of dead. He finally listened to Shepard's words and opened his door again to the "hordes of women that lined up for him". He had found a quarian by the name of Keli'Fromli. He had been sitting at the bar trying to deal with the fact that he was trying to "move on" which made him feel like he had betrayed a trust of the one person he loved, but she had made a dramatic change in his life.

Shepard was surprised to see her causing the calloused Garrus to life hysterically and blow his drink across the table. He was glad that everything with her was going well.

"Just the other day, she wanted to show me her face." Garrus laughed triumphantly. "I think she is more stunning than you." He nodded towards Tali and Shepard.

Tali stared at him, her mouth dropped, faking how hurt she was. Shepard lightly laughed.

"Now that's not nice to say to my wife." Shepard chuckled.

"I wasn't talking about her… Shepard…" Garrus stared at Shepard before what could be described as a smile wiped across his face.

"Garrus!" Shepard laughed.

The joke caused everyone to bust out laughing.

"Well she must be quite a looker then." John added with a wink, getting a small elbow from Tali.

Garrus bent his back backwards as he sighed out, his arms becoming fists as if he was declaring victory. "She is amazing!" Garrus sighed with excitement.

"I'm glad you think that way about me, Gary." Came the delicate voice of a quarian. Garrus almost jumped out of his cloth suit to look down at Keli.

"Keli!" Garrus yelled from atop the stairs.

Keli stood in the grass at the bottom of the stairs looking up at him, her hands folded behind her as she swayed her hips innocently at him. The light cast enough light into the helmet to show the delicate outlines of an incredibly happy and cheerful young woman. Garrus ran down the steps, but slowed when he hit the bottom. She had already started walking towards him, reaching for her visor, taking it off, revealing the pale, but highly attractive face of a young quarian.

Shepard watched as Garrus tensed up slightly from the rare sight, but watched his body completely froze when she unsealed the helmet and pulled the helmet of, along with pushing her hood off. Her hair fell from behind the hood, smooth and dry, revealing that she had already took it off and worked on her hair and face.

"Keelah…" John heard Tali whisper into his ear. "How did Garrus get that lucky?"

"He's always had the woman chasing him…" Shepard chuckled as he rested his head on Tali's shoulders to watch the newly forming couple kissing which was equally humorous.

Shepard watched as, at first, Garrus stiffly and nervously stood as she kissed him in front of John and Tali, but eventually his muscles relaxed and his mind said "to hell with it". He swung her around, her legs sweeping through the tall grass as they kept their lips, or at least Garrus's equivalent, locked as their spin slowed, her legs rejoining the ground.

"I just got news from the doctor… My immune system is strong enough to be out of the suit… He even told me that I should stay out of it longer to make the process speed up faster. I can't believe you worked with him." Keli smiled as she held Garrus's shoulders.

"Mordin is… strange." Garrus joked. They both laughed before Keli looked past Garrus to see Tali and John standing at the top of the staircase.

"It's good to finally meet in a more informal setting the great Commander Shepard!" Keli hollered up to him.

Shepard shook his head as he let Tali go, his hand still staying with his wife as they both made their way down the staircase to go greet their guests. Tali looked back at Shepard as she made her way down the steps. The smile was enough to make Shepard smile confidently at the circumstances. His mind only wandered back to the object that still rested in his pocket. _When she gets home…_


	3. Chapter 2: Retirement

The pleasantries outside quickly migrated their way into the spacious sky lit living room where Garrus quickly took a seat and propped a leg, Keli sitting close next to him, her body weight pushed against him as she leaned her head on his shoulder. Tali sat down on a chair opposite of them, overlapping one of her legs gracefully over the other while Shepard walked off to the kitchen.

"I thought you were the one that supposed to cook while Shepard entertained the guests, Tali." Garrus humored.

Tali's eyes widened, almost seeming hurt at his comments, but the humor was hard to hide in her voice.

"I know how to fix everything… John is the head chef of this household." The quarian wife feigned innocence.

"You should try it!" Shepard's voice echoed around the corner from inside the kitchen.

"I like this house Shepard! Don't you?" She yelled back.

"I do love living here…" He said just loud enough to be heard.

"Then I am not allowed to cook anything on my own." Tali teased with a smile on her face.

Shepard rounded the corner brandishing a plate of quick cooked food. It was only snacks to everyone, but Shepard hadn't planned on company. The tiny quarian delicacies were laid out in a semi-messy formation, but Garrus didn't seem to care as he popped one of the treats into his mouth. Keli picked up one and twirled her hair nervously with the other hand; she hadn't eaten anything solid before. Shepard stared at her for only a second before he glanced at Tali who was also staring at the memorable scene that she had experienced almost seven years before.

Garrus watched her as she lifted the treat up and put it into her mouth, her eyes instantly fluttering with an inner satisfaction and amazement at the flavor and texture. Her heart started pounding with excitement as she instinctually chewed the treat, soft hums of satisfaction could be heard. Tali reached over to Shepard's arm and rubbed it slightly as she felt herself sigh, the memories of her first real "bite" of real food.

"Keelah…" She sighed through the food that was still being chewed in her mouth. "This is… mmm."

"Like it?" Garrus chuckled as he arced his head down to look her in the eyes.

She swallowed and looked back up at Garrus, the gentle innocent smile spreading over her face slowly. Her arms jumped around his neck as she pressed her head against the bottom of her boyfriend's chin. Garrus's mandibles and mouth opened as the surprise on his face showed how he still felt about the relationship. It quickly faded as he placed his hand on her shoulder and bent his head in as he pulled her close, his eyes closing for the embrace.

"Now isn't the time…" Garrus whispered into her ear.

They both stopped and looked over to see Shepard and Tali staring at them, their hands interlocked, softly pressing their fingers against their hands.

"Brining back memories, Shepard?" Garrus asked, as Keli slid partially away from Garrus as not to be laying on him, her face was flushed and she nervously pushed her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm glad you are happy Garrus. I knew the pain you were going through. I was also amazed when I saw that she hadn't made it off the ship." Shepard added remorsefully.

"Please Shepard, lets not bring this up, I'm over what happened to her… it was almost four years ago… I've had time to accept the loss and find someone…" Garrus looked at Keli who had perked her eyes up in a loving worry for her boyfriend's words. He placed his fingers on the bottom of her chin and raised it up to look her closely in the eyes. "…Someone who brings me the happiness that I had felt before.

Keli smiled as her face flushed again. "Gary…?" She whined as she withdrew from his fingers and hit him in the chest. "You make me happy too…" She teased.

Shepard smiled and looked down on the plate of half eaten snacks.

"Come one! Eat up!" Shepard ushered.

Garrus and Keli grabbed a few of the treats, standing up to take their leave.

"There is somewhere I have to be… It was nice to come visit. Have you heard from the others? I don't hear much from them." Garrus stated, swinging one arm around the slender quarian next to him, making his way to the door.

Keli smiled up at Garrus's scarred face, the happiness causing her eyes to glitter, a redness giving life to her face.

"Best wishes Garrus." Shepard yelled as they walked out the door. Garrus managed to throw up a short wave as the bright light wiped them from view.

"I do wonder how the others are doing with their new lives?" Shepard pondered rubbing the small tuft of hair that he had let grow as a way of signifying his retirement. He enjoyed his new look; Tali called it cute and strangely attractive; Nadja wanted him to shave it.

"Shepard-Commander." Shepard turned to see Legion holding a few plates with a ridiculous looking apron tied around his waist. "Have you finished using this plate?" Legion went on, picking up the plate.

"Legion, what are you wearing?" Shepard asked, his hand slapping his face in an emotion that could only be expressed through the action.

"Creator Zorah wished my attire to match my new duty." Legion stated.

Shepard turned slowly to Tali who started whistling innocently, something that Shepard had taught her in their time in relaxation. He shook his head and laughed slightly before he turned back to Legion.

"I'm glad that she told you the correct attire. I knew I was missing something." Shepard laughed heartily; even Tali smiled and put her hand to her mouth trying to hold back the laughter.

Legion left the room with a small acknowledgment of his head. Shepard looked after him and shook his head.

"Tali… what did you tell Legion?" Shepard asked watching as Legion's shadow vanished behind the corner and out of earshot, even for a robot.

He felt her hands slide along his sides as her head rested on his shoulder, swaying him slowly. "I just thought it would be funny." Tali whispered in his ear.

Their swaying continued as they started to dance to the non-existent music again. Shepard slid from her hands and turned so that they were facing each other. Tali put both of her hands on her human lover's chest and swayed her hips more smoothly as she felt his hands finally take their places on her hips. She bowed her head and rested it under Shepard's chin as they danced. Shepard looked towards the music player and blinked, music turning on, softly at first, but growing into an amazing crescendo. Tali looked up into her husband's eyes, a soft glint in them made her smile.

"Why do you get all the luck?" She laughed.

"I wouldn't call it luck… I still have those nightmares…" Shepard whispered softly.

"Everyone gets nightmares…" She cooed to him.

"I've told you… they feel real… all the time." John repositioned his head on Tali's head.

"They'll stop eventually." She pulled her head back to look him in the eyes. He always felt his heart beat slightly different when he looked into her soft glowing, silver eyes. "You are retired now…" She laughed.

He raised his hands up to her shoulders and pressed his thumbs into her muscles. He held fell back as she sighed. He knew she wanted her shoulders and back rubbed again, the joy of having five fingers. She made her way down the hall and walked into their bedroom. She let the robes fall from her revealing her curvy back and toned thighs. Shepard smiled and walked into the bathroom and snagged a few rubbing oils and creams to help with her relaxation.

She was lying on the bed already, completely flat. Shepard rubbed his hands together before he smeared some of the cream onto his hands. He started at her neck, softly working the tense muscles before he started the descent. Her shoulders moved and tensed as he worked all five of his fingers.

"That feels amazing Shepard… ooo…" He just hit a tender spot and her legs lifted slightly from the nerves becoming excited.

Shepard pressed is thumbs through each muscle and nerve of her body and she flinched and tensed at each moment. He ended the massage by softly rubbing his fingers down her back and tracing the areas where her muscles had created small sloping curves in her back. He finished with a final push along her back. Shepard stepped back and felt the dull pain in his fingers from giving the massage. They always hurt after that; he blamed Tali's dense muscles. He looked down at her and wondered why she wasn't moving.

He almost jumped out of his robes when he thought that he had pinched one of her nerves in her spine when he was working on it and quickly went to check on her. He only made it halfway to her when a dull snore filled his eardrum and heart. He slowed his pace and walked to where her head was buried in a pillow. He could just make out the side of her face crushed into the pillow, her eyes closed and her mouth slightly open. He moved the light sweeping blankets and covered up her naked body and walked out the room. He cocked his head back to his strangely positioned wife and shook his head at her.

He walked to the kitchen of the house and looked out that small window there to see crashing of the waves and a sigh from the sea breeze. He took a deep breath in; tasting the Rannoch sea air before he poured some processed water into a machine and turned it on. It converted the crystal clear, shimmering water into a brown and black blend steaming with a thick and bitter odor. Shepard smiled and watched the machine fill the underside pitcher with the converted water.

A small ding filled the kitchen, allowing Shepard to grab the edges of the pitcher and pour the liquid into a small mug decorated in Khelish. Tali had taught him how to read it after she had brought the cup home for him. He fumbled around the edges of the cup; turning it softly and seeing the characters of the language speak the word to him. He felt the warmth that you could only feel through the reawakening of memories. 'I love you more than the galaxy could ever contain'. A series of smaller words were written around the main messages. Tali wouldn't tell him what they meant. Instead, Shepard taught himself what those words meant and even had Shala tell him how to pronounce them correctly. He was waiting for the right time to surprise her with his knowledge of her language when she had already surprised him by speaking English to him with her voice passing through a translator.

He walked over to a series of small containers that lined the edge of the counter where the sink and miscellaneous cookery items were scattered. He opened the first and scooped a few spoonfuls of Rannoch's equivalent to sugar; Shepard preferred this sugar to the sugar that had been given to him on earth and in space. He stirred it in slowly and watched the steam roll from the cup. He walked over to one of the cooling units by the fridge and opened it to reveal shelves of plants and herbs. He grabbed a small handful of the leaves and tore them up, dropping them into the cup. A small stir later and the unique coffee blend was complete.

A quick whiff of the steaming odor, confirmed of that the correct balance had been achieved. He let the warm steam rise into his nose, freeing his sinus and making a warm and soothing feeling fall into his soul before he lifted the cup to his mouth. He tipped the cup slightly, the warm liquid touching his lips. He just sipped enough of the amazing liquid into his mouth, his eyes closed with the relaxing sensations of coffee.

"DAD!" Nadja yelled from the doorway of the kitchen.

John spit the coffee out as he jumped from the sudden change in volume to such a surreal setting that he had created.

"DAD! What are you drinking! It smells good! Can I have some?" Nadja yelled excitingly while running toward him.

"Nadja!" Shepard choked on his coffee. "Why are you home already?"

"The school wants you to come and talk to them about the Reapers for history class!" Nadja exclaimed with a burning excitement behind every syllable.

Tali walked up behind Nadja, some robes were wrapped around her waist, but nothing was above that. Her arms were down at her sides as she walked up and grabbed Nadja, tickling her. Nadja squealed with laughter as she was tickled. Shepard watched them and smiled.

"Why are you screaming in the house?" Tali asked after she was finished.

"The school wants dad to go give a history lesson the Reapers." Nadja smiled innocently.

Shepard looked at his wife. He wasn't shocked to see her topless around their child, nor was he shocked when they went outside during the hot days when she decided to work in the garden. Shepard had quickly become acquainted with the fact that the quarian culture wasn't in anyway up tight about nudity to anyone in their communities. Most quarians still had to wear their suits elsewhere in the galaxy and their formal dress required them to be dressed during those moments. It wasn't too common for Shepard to see at least a couple dozen quarian women walking around without their tops. Over the years, it became natural for John to acquaint himself to the culture shock.

"Are you going to go John?" Tali asked, crossing her arms over her breasts as she spoke.

"Yeah… I might as well go. Teach these children the truth!" Shepard laughed.

Nadja smiled. She only enjoyed when her father showed how amazing he was when she was hidden in the back of the classroom. For her age, she still felt the pride of having Tali as her mother and Shepard as her father though she had started questioning how she was different from the other children, something that she had wanted to ask her parents for some time, but was slightly afraid to ask such a question.

Shepard looked at the mug of coffee that he had put down and sighed. He walked to the table and picked up the over cloak and slid it on before turning back to his mug. He gripped it and put the drink to his lips. He grabbed his daughter's hand and walked out of the room. Tali waved to him as they walked out the door to walk down the hill, into town.

Nadja began a series of questions to her father, mainly about what he was going to tell the class about the Reapers. She even mentioned the few stories that John had mentioned to her as bedtime stories. Shepard was proud to hear her bring up the stories that he had told to her and seeing how bright his child was, second in the class. (She told him that it was some no-life girl who was the teacher's pet. Shepard normally laughed at his daughter's cute accusations as to how she had to be bribing the teacher and tall-tales like that.)

John walked through the gate of the school and walked up the steps to the school. The classroom was the third on the right down the first hall. He walked in to see a group of kids looking at him, a sudden silence and a flush of small whisperings washed the room. The teacher stopped trying to get the kids quiet and stood looking at the man who walked into the room.

"John Shepard, I assume?" the teacher asked.

"You would be correct." John smiled.

"Sen'Iah," he extended his arm out for the Hero of the Galaxy to take his hand (a name that John was not too fond of over the years). "I'm your daughter's galactic history teacher. It's an honor to see you come by with this short notice…"

"Don't mention it, I'm retired… I don't have anything better to do in my free time." John laughed, the teacher joining him.

The kids had remained quiet and still murmured to themselves. A few of them were making comments about the glowing pieces of blue-white crystal sitting in his arm, shimmering off of the ambient light of the sun out the window. Others had noticed the deep scars on his arms while a few others wondered why he wasn't quarian. Nadja sat in the back corner of the room, slightly proud of herself.

John Shepard put the mug of coffee down on the teacher's desk and instantly went to his speech. The kids listened intently as Shepard described the explosions and the attacks. Some of the kids began to shiver from the "scary" parts while they quickly broke out with laughter from a well-placed comic relief. A small ring from the overhead speakers told the class that it was time to move to the next subject. Shepard finished just at the last chime. The class applauded and walked out the room.

"Keelah Se'lai." Stated Val'Fox nar Donut, an artistic schoolboy that Nadja had mentioned on occasion.

"Keelah Se'lai." Stated Mef'Stil nar Rapture, a boy that Nadja liked a few times.

"Keelah Se'lai Shepard…" said Debz'Busc nar Kikai, one of Nadja's best friends.

"Keelah Se'lai." Bowed the head of Rune'Pallum nar Rayya, a boy that Nadja said was extremely quiet, but had helped her when she was having difficulties. She thought of him as one of her best guy-friends.

The rest of the class shuffled past him each giving their blessings. Shepard only recognized a few of the people who walked past: Mag'Or nar Necros, Sec'Mod nar Crane, Mu'Kora nar Opia, Mas'Des nar Reliance, and Pyr'Fyrt nar Inferno. The small hooded head of a boy that Shepard had quickly become acquainted with, Keenan'Eugenio, ran past him. He remembered as being the child of a quarian family that enjoyed the flow of human names. He talked to them regularly.

He took another sip of the warm coffee before he just tipped his head back and gulped the rest of the drink down. He gave his good-bye kisses to Nadja and made his way back to his house. He felt the weight of the object in his pocket bob with his steps.

"When she gets home…" Shepard said to himself.


	4. Chapter 3: Catalyst

A small voice behind Shepard caused him to turn around and see Nadja running up the hill toward him. He was slightly surprised at her being out of school. Her small frame climbed the hill, stumbling slightly on the slippery banks, but a sudden drop of her hand and a flare of her hair and she was back up running, smiles spread across her face. Her arm looped with her father's and she buried her face in his stomach.

"I thought you still had classes to go to." Shepard asked, slightly perturbed by her daughter being here.

"They let everyone out early." She nestled her head against John, her small hand grabbing at the fabric of his robes, tugging on it slightly.

He took her answer as the truth and smiled down at her. The warm feeling that grew out of emotions at that moment was unmatched. He had always been a proud father, but these were the moments that he cherished the most. He put his arm on her shoulder and turned her back to the house.

"Then lets get home kiddo." Shepard laughed. Nadja squealed as she skipped a little before she ran.

Halfway home, Shepard felt the dull weight of the "gift" in his pocket. He stopped slightly and thought about the object, his mind questioned its safety. Nadja stopped running and looked back at her father. The sun sat right at the top of the hill casting a shadow on Nadja's innocent face, her smile shining almost as brightly as her eyes. Shepard reached inside of his pocket.

"Come on Dad…" Nadja groaned. "Why do you have to be so old…?"

"Nadja… Come here for a second." John motioned her over.

She walked down the hill humming a little tune as her head bobbed back and forth. She looked right into his eyes when she arrived in front of him.

"What do you need?" Nadja smiled brightly.

John bent down to look in her eyes at eye level. He smiled at her and pulled the black object from his pocket and fumbled with it.

"You know those stories I told you… the ones with the mysterious hooded man that sacrificed his life to save Daddy?" Shepard asked at first.

"That's my favorite story!" Nadja exclaimed happily, but faded when she saw his eyes show some inner struggle. "…Why?"

"Well that man gave me something before he gave his life. A gift." Shepard smiled.

"So he must have thought you were a really dear friend then."

"…The gift was for you Nadja." Shepard stated quickly, pulling the black cylinder from his pocket and holding it front of her face. "He told me that this was just for you and was only meant for you. I have been holding onto it until I thought you were ready for it." Shepard smiled, resting his hand on her shoulder.

Nadja looked down at the object and had no idea what to do. She had always listened to her father's stories like they were real, but the only proof he had of the events even taking hold was the glowing sparkles in his shoulder. She reached out and felt the cold cylinder with her fingers. They softly traced around the hard edges. Eventually, she found herself holding onto it and holding it with both hands. She turned it slowly until she caught sight of the two letters carved into the side "SB"

"What does 'SB' stand for?" Nadja looked up at her now standing father.

"That was the name of the person who gave it to me…" Shepard stated.

Nadja spun the device in her hands a few more times. She stopped back at the signature and wiped her fingers across it. Something just didn't feel right about it, but she couldn't say what and she didn't want to tell her dad about it. She simply smiled and jumped at him. Her arms wrapped around his waist as her head pressed into his stomach again. He put his hand on her head and smiled to himself.

The walk to the house was slow and peaceful; Nadja skipped around her father and hummed an old quarian song that Shala had taught her when she was only a baby, somehow it had stuck. The white steps of the brilliant house were the last of the ascension. Nadja ran up first, her school bag bouncing around on her back. She ran through the door and straight to her mother who was cleaning the small pile of dishes in the sink.

"Nadja? What are you doing home?" Tali questioned when two soft arms squeezed around her waist. She looked down to see the top of her beautiful daughter's face buried in her side, her nose softly rubbing back and forth.

"She got off early today…" Shepard stated as he tossed his outer robes to the floor. "So anything happen while I was gone?"

"Braz came by again." Tali laughed. "He wanted to talk to you."

"Braz'ure vas Egas?" Shepard laughed. "I thought he was handling some sort of infestation in his house…" Shepard thought out loud.

"He says its something with his water purification system. I would have helped but… you know Braz'ure…" Tali threw a look that Shepard knew was synonymous with Braz'ure. Shepard sighed and shook his head.

Nadja giggled and ran to her room. Tali was unaware of the black cylinder in her hand. Shepard turned and grabbed his outer robe again. He quickly flipped open and checked his Omni-tool for the right calibration of settings and quick repair manuals for reference as he walked towards the door. A dark shape stopped directly in front of him in the doorway. Shepard stared at the spot, but couldn't quite get a good read on whom it was though he knew that he was turian.

"Are you John Shepard?" asked a rustic and piercing voice of a turian that had to have been some sort of general or captain to acquire that authoritative tone.

"That would be me… yes." John answered, Tali stopping her dishes and wiped her hands slowly as she walked closer to see who wanted her husband.

"My name is Ven Zer'atai… General Ven Zer'atai." The general explained as he still stood at the threshold of the door in perfect posture, hands behind his back.

"General…" Shepard bowed his head respectfully at the man. "Please come inside, take a seat."

The turian general bowed his head as his arms fell to his sides. He took a few steps into the soft lighting of the house allowing Shepard and Tali to see the red tattoos across Ven's scarred face. One scar caught Shepard's attention, a long deep gash that had taken a chunk of his mandible when it had been cut off of his face. Like most turians, Ven had a look like he was angry at the universe or the fact of his mutilated face, but Shepard was surprised to see that the scars brought out more of an attractive quality to him; it made him look more intimidating and Shepard knew of women who really dug that sort of thing. He shrugged off the idea.

Ven sat down on one of his chairs, looking around the room and nodding to himself.

"You have a magnificent home here Commander." Ven stated his vision stopped at Tali who was still standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "Seems a bit presumptuous of you to have a quarian maid…"

Tali's face slowly wrinkled into a fit of anger at the turian's words, but Shepard beat her to it.

"That isn't the maid General. That is my wife." Shepard chuckled.

Ven's eyes quickly perked up as he rose from the chair quickly. "I want to give you my humble apologies Mrs.?" Ven asked extending his hand to her as he walked.

"Zorah… Tali'Zorah." Tali stated with her best formal voice through the jerking anger.

"Ahh… Mrs. Zorah. I've heard enough of you to write a book. It is an honor to finally meet you in person." Ven bowed graciously for her.

"So why are you here… General?" Shepard asked, pulling up his own formal air into his voice.

Ven turned and smiled to him before he walked back to his chair. "It has come to our attention that you still possess an alien race thought lost and that you are refusing to let our scientists take samples of it… is that true?" Shepard smiled as he brushed the robes from his shoulder to reveal the blue, sapphire-like crystals embedded in his flesh. Ven's mandibles moved slightly at the sight.

Nadja poked her head around the corner to see her dad and her mom talking to a prominent looking general. She didn't want to ruin the formal air so she turned back toward the dark hallway and her dark room and walked to her room. She walked inside and pulled the privacy sheet over the doorframe. She jumped onto her bed and lifted the strange device into the air and observed it in the sunlight.

She squinted at the designs and tried to figure out what the significance was of it. She simply couldn't stop herself from feeling a sense of amazement and attraction to solving the puzzle. She felt her frustration build when she had turned it at least thirty times in her hands and had yet to figure out a thing. She sat up angrily and quickly turned the gift in her hands. One of her fingers caught a rough edge to one of the carved designs. She breathed in quickly as she looked at the blood bubble on her finger.

She set the gift down and walked to a small box she had in the room for when she wanted to work on engineering material. Inside was a small container of medi-gel and a coupe of adhesive pads with fabric in the middle. She didn't feel like "cheating" as she put it so she grabbed one of the adhesives and wrapped it around her finger before going back to her puzzle.

"What's wrong with you…?" She said out-loud to the black object on her bed. She picked it up and tossed it under her bed. "Out of sight… out of mind…" she grunted as she folded her arms. Eventually curiosity set in and she took the adhesive from her finger to check if the bleeding had stopped. She smiled she saw that it had done just that.

With a calmer attitude, she hopped down on her knees and reached under the bed for the cylinder again. Her fingers just touched the edges, but she just couldn't reach it. She put her whole shoulder under the bed as she reached again. This time her fingers wrapped tightly around it and she smiled.

Suddenly, she felt the object lurch, like it was jumping further under the bed. It pulled her roughly toward the bed causing her head to hit the frame. Nadja's heart began to pound quickly as a wave of fear and intrigue filled her body. The fear quickly overruled the intrigue when it caused her face to hit the frame again. She felt her muscles quickly release the object, but when the object pulled her into the frame again, she realized that her hand was paralyzed around the device.

Nadja looked around the room to find some way of getting the object off of her hand. She pulled with all of her might. It jerked her against the bed again, but she quickly recovered and pulled with all of her strength, putting her feet against the frame as she tugged. Like a boot stuck in the mud, her arm flew from under the bed. Nadja looked at the scene of the device glowing with darkness. Everything around it appeared to be lost within a dark field including her hand.

She couldn't take it anymore. She screamed.

Shepard, Tali, and Ven looked at the hallway to Nadja's room. Shepard was the first to jump up and make it to the hall. He pushed himself around the first corner and turned another sharp corner to Nadja's room. His heart almost stopped when he saw the pulsing darkness filling her room, her hand in the middle of it. Tali was next to join Shepard, her heart started beating fast and wild as a wave of panic set in. She looked at Shepard quickly. Ven then joined the couple staring in the room.

"…What in the world…?" Ven asked out loud.

Nadja could feel the hot tears fall from her face as she struggled to pull her hand from device. The furniture and anything that wasn't bolted to the ground suddenly lifted into the air and began to move around the center of energy. Shepard took two steps into the room when the darkness suddenly exploded into a blinding white light. He flinched back in pain.

Shepard's young daughter had cocked her head away from the light as she screamed, "Daddy!". Shepard pushed his strength and charged toward his daughter. He dodged a high velocity data-pad, but a sudden jolt of where a heavy piece of bed frame caused him to stumble.

"Daddy!" Nadja screamed as the intensity of the light began to intensify.

Tali charged into the room next. She managed to get closer to her daughter than Shepard had before the bed frame hit her, but a data-pad managed to strike her in the head. She felt slightly dizzy from the connection, but she didn't stop moving. Eventually Shepard and Tali were pushing through the flying debris to get to their daughter.

The white light began to whistle loudly. The room began to shake causing a ripple through the house as the floor pulsated. Ven stared at the events and had to grab onto the side of the door as an overwhelming force shot from the room causing him to begin sliding backward. John and Tali grabbed each other as they pushed forward. They both reached out and just managed to grab their daughter's arm when the light exploded sending a shockwave through the room. Ven, who was still standing in the doorway, was tossed against the wall of the hallway, hitting the hard rock, a small amount of blood was left where his head had collided.

Then silence.


	5. Chapter 4: Brand

Ven could hear the breaking of glass and the crackling of small fires. He slowly opened his eyes, a blur of colors and slowly moving shapes. He looked down to see his hands move and fall onto the ground where he felt the broken glass sharps press into his rough skin. He breathed out as his mind tried to reestablish itself. He turned back to the dark room that he quickly remembered had the strange anomaly. His senses quickly returned as he jumped up and held himself up b the edges of the door, looking into the room. The center of the floor was blackened as a few of the sheets sat aflame.

Ven's brain flickered as he noticed a dark shape in the middle of the room floating. He felt the air around him lose its warmth as he felt the shape slowly turn to him. A dark void sat at the top of the form where he assumed was some sort of face looking at him, but his vision couldn't focus on it.

"Who the hell are you?" Ven asked the shape.

It slowly began to take shape, a quarian with black robes. She was clearly a female from the basic form that emerged from the shadows. It took a few steps toward Ven before it the darkness broke from it and Nadja fell from the shadows. Ven quickly lunged forward and grabbed her before she hit the ground. He looked around quickly. The dark quarian had dissipated into the air. He also found Tali and Shepard passed out against the wall.

Shepard was slouched as he sat on top of one of Nadja's cabinets that hadn't moved while Tali was bent over one of the bed frames. He slowly put Nadja down and ran over to their bodies. He checked Shepard first; he pushed his fingers into his neck and felt the beat of the pulse. He sighed with relief as he ran over to Tali and checked her pulse. The small bump of a heartbeat brought another wave of relief across him.

He pulled Tali off of the bed frame and set her nicely on the ground before he managed to lift Shepard off of the cabinet and down beside Shepard. He slumped against the wall and put his hand on his head. He felt the warmth of some liquid on his head and lowered his hand to his eyes and noticed the blood drip from his fingertips. His head fell to his side as he opened is Omni-tool and contacted the quarian authorities.

A small breeze came through the broken window and caused the fires to cringe from the air. Some of the fabrics and loose broken pieces of furniture moved gently to the breeze. It almost felt unreal as the silence filled the room. He caught something out of the corner of his eye and looked over to see Tali start moving. He tried to rise quickly and help her up, but his head quickly fell to the side and he toppled over from the disorientation. He pushed himself up again and slid through the broken rock and toys to her side.

"…Shepard… John… John!" She jumped up and looked around the destroyed room.

"Whoa… whoa… take it easy. Slow down." Ven grumbled.

Tali looked at Ven's bloody face. She still looked slightly confused, but when she placed her hand down to sit up, she felt the softness of a body next to her. She looked down hastily and saw Shepard lying on the ground. Her heart leaped as she jumped up and put her face close to him, checking his pulse and his breath.

"He's fine…" Ven plopped himself back against one of the walls, wiping some of the blood that had begun to drip from his mouth. "…Damn…"

Tali looked at him and then around the room and caught the scorched area with Nadja lying in the middle of it. Tali crawled quickly over to her and picked her up in her hands and rocked her back and forth. Teas broke through her eyes as she cuddled her daughter and slowly crawled back to Shepard's side. Just as she arrived at his side, a group of officials ran into the room and helped her up. She couldn't hear anymore as if the sound had been turned off. They helped her out the door as she watched them lift Shepard onto a stretcher.

The wait at the hospital was excruciating. Tali had three stitches on a small cut on her head and a nice helping of medi-gel to speed the healing process. She sat by Shepard's bed and held his hand, slowly rubbing it, hoping, wishing that he would just wake up. Every second began to feel like days as Tali felt herself skirt along the edges of losing control and breaking down. She breathed out slowly and paced around the room before returning to Shepard's side and holding his hand. She eventually walked to Nadja's contained room. She wasn't allowed to enter. The doctors claimed that some strange radiation was being emitted.

Tali stared through the glass, her arms tightly wrapped around her as she felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness of the situation. She wasn't able to fight back the break down for Nadja. She fell to her knees, her hands pressed against the glass containment barrier and just lowered her head.

"Mrs. Zorah?" A rough voice from behind her asked.

She wiped the tears from her eyes as she turned and looked at the quarian police officer.

"Yes… what is it?" She breathed the mucus in and cleared her throat and her vision, trying to get a professional air to her.

"We were wondering if you knew what happened in your house during the incident." One of them asked.

"I don't know what happed… we were meeting with General Ven' Zer'atai and then I… we… heard a scream in…" She began to lose it again as the events began to play out. "Something was happening… I don't know what it was…"

"We are sorry for bothering you at this time…" The quarian officer bowed his head and made his leave.

Tali turned back to her daughter and breathed out as she made her way back to Shepard's room. She just turned the corner to his room when she saw a series of doctors and nurses running into his room. She quickened her pace slightly, but right when she saw a defibrillator being run into the room. She broke into a run and broke through enough of the nurses and the doctors to see Shepard shaking violently in his bed as they placed the pads on his chest.

She felt herself breakdown instantly.

"John! No! John! Please!" Tali cried as three nurses grabbed her and pushed her back. The loud dull tone of the flat-line echoed through the room. The doctors just about activated the pads when Shepard instantly stopped shaking and his heartbeat returned to a calm beat. The doctors and nurses stared in disbelief at the screen in amazement. Tali walked slowly through the distracted doctors and made it to Shepard's side.

His eyes shot open and he breathed in quickly. "Nadja!" was the muffled words that made it through the breather in his mouth.

He looked around the room and finally down at his chest with the pads against him and the flood of equipment meant to keep him alive surrounding his body. He glanced at Tali and saw the stitches. Everything quickly returned to him. Including the dream that had plagued his unconscious mind.

_The darkness swirled around his body as he felt his body fall through a void. His mind was lost and confused, as his focus could never focus on any one thing. His breath was shallow as something pinched his lungs and restricted his breathing as this strange and overwhelming cold chilled his soul. A sudden breeze whistled behind him before he felt his feet collide with a surface. The only reference point that he could see was his own hands and his body while everything else remained dark._

"_Shepard…" The wind whistled to him._

_Shepard turned quickly around to try to find the genesis of the noise, but nothing could be seen in the veil._

"_Shepard" It sighed again._

_Shepard jerked his body around to see a body slowly glow into existence. He squinted through the light that slowly dimmed. His heart raced as he realized the woman that was standing in front of him._

"_Liara?" His voiced echoed quickly as though he was standing in a cave of loose metal._

_She walked toward him, a smile on her face. He was about to ask the question again, but she suddenly leaped forward like she was charging, but she smashed into, literally into, him. It was almost like she entered his body and made herself him. He could feel the energy course through his body, a pulsing pain as something swirled through him and burned through his body. He jerked violently as he fell to his knees. His body lurched forward, but he managed to catch himself and breathe deeply, his eyes dripped with tears as he could hear a strange noise. He just managed to look back at himself and see the steam rising and wavering off of his back._

"_Shepard…" the wind spoke again._

_John turned back to where the noise came from and came face to face with the smile that he thought that he would never see ever again. It had been an ally for him in the last battle with the Reapers, but there was still this uneasy air about this being. The existence of him now was even more evidence to maintain that belief._

"_You… You're dead…" Shepard fell to the ground again as his back lurched with pain. _

_The smiled widened before the dark cloaked figure rose up and stood over Shepard. _

"_Dead? Death would imply a loss of life… I made a sacrifice, losing my physical form, but I found a way over the years to create a copy of my personality, my knowledge, everything, and all compacted down to a nice little stasis pod." The Shadow Broker smiled that disarming smile at Shepard. He was amazed that it hadn't lost its luster._

"_What did you do to my daughter?" John shot through his teeth._

"_Your daughter? Nadja'Zorah Shepard nar Normandy? Yes… she is fine. She will be fine though looking at the coming circumstances… her being fine may be an issue and you won't be around to help her through it…" The Shadow Broker cackled._

"_What do you mean?" Shepard knew the answer already._

"_Nothing and no one lives forever… you are just as vulnerable as anyone else… and she serves a higher purpose. A purpose that causes such variances to the system that she fascinated me. She holds so much chaos… such mayhem." The Shadow Broker gained an air of excitement. "She is the variable of variables and I had to keep watch over her…"_

"_You are doing what?" the question blurted from his mouth._

"_I have to observe the catalyst to the system directly… I'll be around…"_

"_Wait!"_

Everything quickly hit him as he looked at Tali quickly.

"Where's Nadja?" John asked.

"She's in the room… down the hall in critical condi-" Shepard's quick movements out of the bed stopped her, as he leaped up and ripped the cords out of his arms and chest and ran out the door. He ran down the hall looking in each of the clear window clean rooms and intensive care rooms. He rounded the corner and looked quickly around. He caught sight of the body of his daughter laying on the one of the beds. He ran to the door and hit the open button. A dull clicking confirmed the locks were in place.

He tried to open his Omni-tool, but found that it had been removed. He shook his head as he quickly and manually flipped open the hacking movements over the pad and quickly opened the door. Tali had just made it to the door, along with a group of doctors who had caught up to him. Shepard walked to Nadja's side and looked down at her arm that was wrapped up from the blast. He felt that he knew something and he had to know now.

He grabbed one of the laser scalpels from one of the tables and cut the bandage from her hand. The black swirling marks on her arm resembled the tribal design tattoos that some gangs on Earth would get. Shepard had been a fan of those tattoos, but Tali didn't want to see him with it. He knew what this was a mark of; he could feel the familiarity of the designs.

"John?" Tali cried as she grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?" She pleaded to him.

The human only turned down to Nadja and looked at her arm. Tali followed his vision and saw the markings on her daughters arm. The dull thud in her heart made her lose her breath. She quickly turned to Shepard at a loss for words. She remembered the dreams that Shepard described to her. It was the design that he had described to her countless times. She had used these stories to entertain Nadja when she was younger and had even traced the designs on her arm as if she was drawing it. She quickly stared at her husband.

"The… the… the… it's back?" Tali felt the air of impossibility hit her.

"It never left… It was always here… it's now in her…" Shepard said, a built anger growing in intensity. Tali stared at her daughter and felt a wave of sadness and remorse spread over body. She wanted to cry and just let out the emotional hold that she had held since she had woke up.

"W-what does it want?" Tali questioned.

Shepard slowly shook his head. "Nothing…" He let the words float out of his mouth. "Just to watch her…"

Tali looked down at her unconscious daughter and shook her head slowly. She felt a wave of hopelessness. She knew that she no longer had control over the situation and she couldn't fix it. She felt a sudden wall of anger burn through her body and her heart as she turned toward Shepard.

"Bosh'tet!" She shoved him. "Why did you give her the device? We should have just thrown it in the ocean, launched into space, bury it in the deepest hole! But you wanted to give it to her! You had to! Why did you do it? Why did you…? Why…? " Her face distorted as she tried to fight back the tears. Her legs finally gave way as the hopelessness set in with full force.

John picked her up from her slump and held her close, slowly rocking her and turning her back to Nadja. He looked down at his daughter's marked arm. He felt that feeling of always being controlled by a being that never seemed to die or disappear from his life. He buried his nose in her neck and kissed it softly. They were going to need all of the support they could now.


	6. Chapter 5: Shadows in the Night

John and Tali, as happy as they were that they were that he was awake, couldn't bring themselves to be happy when they were stuck sitting outside of their child's room as she laid on the table, stuck in a dream induced coma. Shepard wished he could somehow get into Nadja's head and stop the Shadow Broker's plan before he accomplished whatever he was going to do with her. The thought drove a stake into his head and he just wanted to find the physical Broker and destroy every part of him. He lowered his head in anger as he placed his hands on the glass barrier separating him from his daughter.

A small noise of movement caused Shepard's eyes to open slightly wider, his heart flared with a blast of shock and amazement. He raised his head and saw Nadja's hand rise up to her eyes and slowly rub them as her legs began to move.

"Dad… Mom…" She stated in a tired drone. "What's going on?"

John and Tali disregarded the safety measures of the room's vacuum seal to prevent any unknown airborne contagion or some sort of something that just annoyed John to death. They both made it to Nadja at the same time and hugged her at the same time. She seemed slightly confused at the flood of love.

"Umm… Dad? Mom? Where am I?" Nadja asked as she looked around.

John noticed that something wasn't quite right with Nadja. Just the way that she asked the question just seemed off and not quite fitting with how he imagined her to ask the question, that is, if she even asked that question.

"You're in the hospital sweetie…" Tali explained as she nuzzled her nose in Nadja's neck.

"Why? What happened?" Nadja asked.

The question didn't bother Shepard again. He could almost place his finger on it, but he just couldn't think straight. He just hugged Nadja tighter and rubbed his hand through her hair and felt the happiness well up in his eyes and almost crack through, but he held it back.

"You don't remember?" Tali asked, her voice beginning to crack with the happiness that Shepard had diverted. She breathed in heavily to try to calm her body, but she just wanted to cry.

Nadja answered with a shake of her head. The look in her eyes gave enough evidence for Shepard to feel relieved and concerned. He was glad that she didn't remember the events; he didn't know how he was going to explain the whole event to her so that she could understand. John still noticed something different about her eyes. They looked like they had lost their innocence.

"Oh! I had one of the most vivid and amazingest dream ever!" the innocence quickly returned. Shepard smiled. "At first I didn't know what was going on, it was just like this amazing swirly of dark shapes and stuff, but suddenly I could hear waves crashing and I was home. I was down at the rocky beach and saw this man sitting in a chair. I couldn't see his face…"

Shepard swallowed and wished that she wouldn't continue, but he had to know what the Broker told her or what he did to her.

"… We talked about stuff. He was really nice, but he or she… I don't know… I guess I never noticed." Nadja laughed from the excitement of how much she remembered of her dream. "Anyways… Where was I…? Oh Yeah!" So, he began to tell me that my future was going to be filled with adventure and that I was some sort of chosen one to drive the monsters back. The monsters had a name, or at least I thought it was a name, unless he was repeating himself… He called them Chosen. I don't know. But we talked for a couple of days just about everything. He was very friendly and nice and even told me how to unlock my inner mind or something like that…"

Shepard swallowed and stared at his daughter. He hoped that the story wouldn't get anymore concerning, but Nadja continued.

"… I was slightly afraid when he did it, but how I felt afterward… I just felt that everything would be okay. It just felt like…" Nadja stopped talking and just thought about what to say to describe what she felt happened. "… It felt like I grew up in a single second."

That explained the loss of innocence. "Do you know what happened a couple of nights ago? The day I gave you the gift from my 'good friend'?"

"I went to my room and…" Her eyes showed a loss. She giggled. "I guess I was really tired and just fell asleep." She giggled again.

Tali had a look of concern as she stared at Shepard. John didn't know whether to be relieved that she didn't have to remember that night. He hugged her and helped her from the bed. She laughed and ran to the door and opened it up for her parents who had stopped and stared at something.

"What?" She asked coyly.

John and Tali had noticed the condition of the door. It had an auto-lock feature and only a doctor on the outside of the door was allowed to open the door. They were just about to stop her from opening the door to tell her that the door was locked and they would have to wait for someone to open it, but once her hands had touched the door, the sign changed to an unlocked state. Nadja was unaware of such and event and felt concerned about her parents' reaction to something. She let the door close and walked toward them.

"C'mon… Let's go home." Nadja teased. John walked past his daughter smiling at her and grabbed the door handle and pushed but found it to be locked. He groaned and looked at Tali before Nadja ran up to him and grabbed the door, it opened easily.

Nadja's parents brushed it off for now; they didn't need other people to know about this strange development. They made their way home, holding and hugging their daughter and hoped for the best. John's mind was ablaze with questions of these so called Chosen that were going to come or whatever the Shadow Broker was trying to warn them of this time. John angrily pushed it out of his head as he saw the dark sweeping lines on Nadja's hand and arm. It had gone to far this time…

The house was quiet and everything was in order. Shepard was surprised to find that Nadja's room was completely clean and that everything was made and set into order. Nadja ran in and looked around and smiled.

"Home sweet home!" She copied Shepard's line when he would come home sometimes. Her dad couldn't help but smile at her returning innocence, but he could still hear a voice that was not hers yet.

"Who cleaned up thi-" John started.

"Shepard Commander. Pertaining to the room of your daughter. This platform has detected a large variance in power and matter alignment. This platform also measured a level of Element Zero radiation that would be fatal to most organics." Legion stated.

Shepard looked at the room and felt his heart beat like he just let his daughter run to her death. Legion quickly picked up on it.

"The radiation has been strangely absorbed at the point that the medical officials arrived at the front door. I let them in to deal with the medical emergency. We are still receiving strange readings from Creator Nadja'Zorah Shepard. It is radiating from her decorated hand." Legion stated, his flaps pulsing gracefully to put emphasis on the correct words.

"What type of readings?" John asked.

"Daddy! Look at me!" Nadja giggled and squealed with excitement.

"Not now dear…" John stared at Legion. "What readings?"

"John!" Tali yelled pointing into the room.

Shepard drove his attention quickly to the room and saw that Nadja had opened her Omni-tool. Instead of the original orange color that they had, hers had transformed into a dark, almost black tool. She wasn't even touching it and John could see the dials moving and the data files being activated. He could also just make out the small movement, much like static moving through the Omni-tool, her brand feeding the tool with a hidden, ancient knowledge.

He tried not to be concerned. He tried to pass off their reactions as excitement at her new toy and he even made it seem like a present.

"So you like your new present?" Shepard executed a perfect lie to his daughter. Tali turned to him with confusion at first, but the glance he threw her told her that he wasn't going to make his daughter panic about something that no one had the ability to cure.

"We thought you deserved a nice present for getting through the hospital like a strong girl." Tali added, also making a perfect addition to the atmosphere of the situation.

Nadja stared at her "new" Omni-tool and walked past her parents to the kitchen to get a bite to eat. Shepard stared at Tali as he turned to let Nadja through. She didn't look too happy. His quarian wife pushed past him and walked to their room, obviously flustered and confused. John looked at Legion for support, but his head flaps simply flared once before he walked to the kitchen to help Nadja make a snack.

"Tali…" Shepard called after his wife as she turned abruptly into their room and vanished.

He shook his head and walked to their door and poked his head in to see what she was doing. Tali paced back and forth in the room, her hands furiously sliding past each other as her eyes spoke of her inner conflict.

"Tali?" Shepard asked soothingly as he entered the room and walked toward her.

"How could we do that John? How could we lie to her like that? She needs to know what is wrong. This isn't right!" A few tears broke from her stressed and confused eyes. She wiped her hand on her head and took a couple of deep and long breaths. "I'm fine… I'm fine. I understand that she won't understand if we tell her that her mind is being taken over from some psychopathic egomaniac machine that is now telling us that the Reapers were the least of our worries? …Bosh'tet!" Tali wanted to fix something or tinker with something to get the stress and thoughts from her head, but she just couldn't bring herself to do anything.

Shepard walked up behind her, touching her shoulder. She didn't turn to him as he watched her shoulders jerk and move abruptly. She breathed in a heavy sob as she turned to him and threw her body against him. She cried in his chest as her barriers fell apart and the stress of the whole situation took its toll. Shepard could only hold her as he felt the warm liquid of her saliva, her tears, and the mucus from her nose soaked into his shirt. He wished he could cry with her, but he could only stand with his arms around her, rocking Tali back and forth as if she were his daughter.

He breathed in deeply as he stared at the bed. Nothing felt comfortable anymore, like their entire house was being watched by the shadows and the happiness had been drained from them, yet, John noticed, the sun was still hanging in the sky and the waves still sung their long and wispy sighs. Their house felt contaminated when it hadn't changed at all. He tried to keep those ideas and simply hope for the best.

Nadja ran into the room, a quarian equivalent to a sandwich in her hands. She jumped on their bed and looked at them. Somehow, Tali had managed to replace all of her barriers and wipe almost all trace that she was crying when she turned to her daughter and smiled.

"You know the rules Nadja… no eating on the bed. Especially on our bed." Tali and Shepard quickly moved to both sides of the bed and surrounded her. She squealed with excitement as she tried to find a way out.

"Legion! Help me!" Nadja yelled to the robot standing in the doorway.

"This installation is not allowed to assist in the escape of a nutrient misconduct rule. Your punishment is inevitable." Legion turned and left.

"Legion! I hate you so much you Bosh-" She was stopped mid sentence as Tali and Shepard tickled her into the bed while Tali took her sandwich. "Hey!" She had to stop again as she laughed, Shepard's fingers tickling her sides.

In that instant, all of the stress and the painful memory of the previous events vanished. They were once again a family, laughing and screwing around with each other. Nadja was red in the face as she tried to push and escape from her parents' hold, but she couldn't escape with her smaller body and less strength than her father. Eventually they stopped and could only laugh. All three of them could barely breath as their happiness drove a spear through their stress and killed it instantly. It was simply a mishap, and they weren't about to treat mishaps like sinking ships. Not when their daughter needed them the most now.

Nadja grabbed her sandwich and left the room. She stuck her tongue out before she left completely. Shepard and Tali were left laying on the bed in relaxation. John took a deep breath in and let Tali cuddle up next to him. She didn't say a word, but he knew that she was telling him that they should ignore the possibility that they could lose their daughter and simply keep her happy by staying the same. The day had been long and tiring, so once the warm body of his wife pressed against him, he felt the wave of exhaustion slowly permeate his body leaving his eyes drooping and his breathing slow.

Tali too felt an almost calming relief. There wasn't anything noticeably wrong with their daughter except the mark on her arm, and, from what they could tell so far; the predicted transformation was slow and not even noticeable against her shining innocence. She wanted to talk to Shepard, but a slow growl made her look up at him and see his eyes had finally fallen and he softly snored. She wrapped her arms tighter around him and pressed her face against his chest and let herself fall into John's sleep.

Meanwhile, Nadja sat in her room fiddling with her new black Omni-tool. She fumbled with the commands, but found herself surprisingly aware of how to work the device. It was far more complex and advanced than the other Omni-tools she had seen and she was surprised that her parents would give her such a gift. The smile on her face showed that she was proud and happy with her parents. She decided to do her homework and flipped open the data stores.

The smile on her face began to fade as a wall of files and text quickly ran past the screen. She wasn't in shock of the number of files that were impossible to hold, but that she almost felt her mind go blank. She felt like an empty shell staring out of a body. She looked around the room, but her body didn't move; yet she wasn't afraid.

After two minutes of a blank stare, she was finally able to blink her muscles began to move. She breathed heavily like her lungs were drained of all the air. She looked down at her Omni-tool and saw that it was blank. She turned her arm around and checked the different processes and switches, making sure that they were calibrated correctly. Everything seemed in working order. She scratched her head and thought about the situation. Before she could think badly of what had just happened, she was quickly distracted with another piece of homework and went back to work, humming a tune that she had never heard before in her life, yet it seemed familiar and natural.

Legion paced through the kitchen as he made his way to another location of the house. He abruptly stopped and turned in the direction of young Nadja's room. His head flaps flared as he turned and walked to her room. The light was on and he found her laying on the floor swinging her legs and messing with her Omni-tool as she punched in lines of information into her homework data pad.

"Young Nadja'Zorah Shepard? We are picking up a powerful relay of radio frequency coming from your room. Such a frequency is interfering with geth communication relays in the nearby vicinity. This unit would require that you cease with the transmissions or use a less powerful frequency." Legion stated.

Nadja's feet stopped moving and she cocked her head back and looked at Legion. She didn't know what he was talking about and was even more surprised when he spoke again.

"Thank you for your cooperation. This unit is required to remind you to continue with your education." Legion obliged.

Nadja stared at him confused as she watched him leave her doorway and walk down the hallway. She could hear his feet slowly fading as he vanished further into the house. She found it creepy and it scared her slightly, which was new to her.

Nadja had grown up to be one of the bravest kids in school. She always smiled and she always avoided fights by keeping calm and solving it through compromise. She had never been afraid of the dark, nor jumped at shadows. Her life growing up with two of the bravest heroes of the galaxy had taught her well and told her great tales of bravery, making her aspire to be at least that brave… or braver, but she didn't see how. She breathed slowly and slowly turned around and looked at the door. Something was still standing there, she could feel it, but not see it. To combat her fear, she jumped up and walked straight to the door to see if whatever it was would move or if she would run into it. Nothing. The feeling vanished into thin air. She looked down the hall, nothing. She shrugged it off and walked back to her room and looked at her paper that she had to compile with known sources in literature.

She was amazed to find that it was almost finished with sources that she didn't even look up nor read before in her life. She reread her words and found that they were hers, but it seemed odd. The more she read the line of the cited source the more she remembered the rest of the book. She looked through her small library, which was amazing for a seven-year-old girl, but she had a knack her learning and loved reading about technology. She didn't own that book. The presence came back.

She stared angrily at the door and walked toward it again, her shadow casting a large shadow on the wall of the hallway. It slightly made it seem like someone standing there, but she kept walking to the edge of her doorway. Nothing was there, but the presence remained this time. She turned her head slowly down to the corner of the door, thinking about what could be causing it. She chose to ignore it and passed it off as being tired, which was a first for her.

She walked back to her bed and never turned back to look at the doorway where her shadow was still cast with its head looking at the corner of the doorway. The head of the shadow slowly turned up and looked into the room as Nadja turned off the lights, wiping the shadows with darkness.

Nadja turned around in her bed and looked up at the ceiling. She felt a strange sense of cynicism on her view of everything. She had seen others look at the world like this, but they were much older and her dad had explained it to her as simply becoming mature. She had asked, innocently at the time, when she would be 'mature'. Her dad smiled at her and told her that he wished that she would always stay innocent, but that when she would be around sixteen to eighteen years of age… Nadja knew seven was far from that number and from what she could tell it wasn't normal for girls her age to look at the universe like that.

She turned her slightly glowing eyes over to the door and saw with her ability to see in low light conditions a shadow being cast against the wall. It stretched from where she had stood in the doorway before turning around to about equal to her actual height on the wall. It was eerie and creepy, but Nadja found it fascinating like it was some universal anomaly that she had accidently stumbled upon. Her innocence quickly returned and she wanted to go on an adventure and figure out the cause of the shadow-without-a-body.

She leaped from her bed, landing softly on the ground and walked toward the dark form. Each step made the room feel colder. The light excited smile on her face began to fade as she felt that she shouldn't be doing this, but she needed to get a closer look at this.

The shadow's arm moved back slowly and then moved in a way that would imply that the hand was coming out of the wall. Nadja stopped in her tracks when a hand came out of the wall, clearly quarian… clearly her own hand, but darker. She stepped slowly backward as the hand grabbed the wall and pulled the shadow further into existence. Eventually a head broke through and looked up at her. The face was dark and the slight glow from her eyes was red instead of the original white.

Nadja looked behind her to make sure she didn't run into anything. She couldn't feel anything and she had no idea what to do except watch. The figure moved out of the wall and walked toward Nadja, its footfalls completely silent like no one was there. The figure slowed and stopped right in front of Nadja. It was like looking in a mirror except the reflection being darker and having a sinister glow in her eyes.

"What are you? How did you come out of my wall?" Nadja asked shakily.

"I am you… and I did not come 'out of the wall'… that would imply I was in the wall. No. I was on the wall and now I am off..." Nadja heard her own voice say. It was her voice, but it sounded off… devoid of life.

"What do you want?" Nadja felt her heart wanting to escape and run.

"Only this…" the mirror image of herself leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

Nadja flinched back and wanted to stop, but she quickly realized that her copy was sucking herself into Nadja's body. She squirmed and tried to scream, but she couldn't escape. She thrashed and kicked as she closed her eyes and wished that it would just end!

Nadja jumped up out of her bed, breathing hard. She stared at the wall. It was daytime; the sun filled her room. She breathed slowly and looked around her room. She couldn't believe it.

"It was a dream… It was a dream…" She tried to close her eyes and breath herself slowly through her nightmare. She pulled up her bed covers and curled up in the corner, sitting straight up, letting the sweat dry from her face. She felt wet, like she had wet the bed, but she checked and saw no such problems. It was just sweat on her body.

She buried her face in her hands and wanted to cry, but she couldn't get herself going. She was on the edge, her tears resting just on the edge of her eyes, but they never broke. Her lungs heaved for air and the cool breeze from the ocean blew into her room. It was cool and refreshing.

Nadja looked over at the window and smiled weakly. "You better get dressed and distract yourself with your friends…" Nadja whispered to herself. She slowly climbed from her bed and slowly slid her clothes on. She walked out into the hallway, avoiding the point on the wall that was in her head. She didn't even notice the tattoo on her arm had changed to a different shape as she ate her breakfast as John gave her a show of his flipping abilities while Tali shook her head when the equivalent of an omelet stuck to the ceiling. _Today is going to be a fun day_. Nadja thought to herself as she skipped out the door, humming a tune that wasn't hers.


	7. Chapter 6: The Future's Call

Nadja had only jumped down a few of the steps when she looked up and saw a human in uniform was walking up the stairs. He looked at her, his one eye blue and hazed from being blind and of no use, a stretching scar covering a large portion of his face and his Alliance uniform was covered in medals and recognition. At first she assumed it was Zaeed Massani, but a voice deep in her head told her that she should go back inside and tell her father that there was a man at the door. She turned around and ran back inside as the man made his way up the rest of the stairs. Nadja walked into the kitchen where her dad was cleaning the dishes and Tali was eating a small snack.

"Someone is here for you dad…" Nadja smiled.

"Commander John Shepard? You home?" came the voice of the man that Nadja had ran into.

John looked at her daughter before he dried his hands and made his way to the door. He quickly saw that it was a general from one of the Alliance ships that had served in the Galactic War. He smiled and showed him grace and acceptance into his house. The man bowed his head and entered, looking at the décor of the house, from the white brick arches to the hanging, flowing sheets.

"Nice place you have here Commander." The man spoke.

"Please don't take this as me being rude, but you haven't introduced yourself yet." Shepard chortled, making note of the formality that he walked and the tone of his voice being serious, the compliments being only a formality.

"General Aldric Strontius. I led the left flank of the defending fleet. It was an honor to serve at your side." Aldric grinned through his scarred mouth.

"It seems everyone who has decided to come visit me has had a series of scars on their faces. Did we try to fight the Reapers with our dashing good looks?" Shepard teased as he offered a seat to the laughing General.

"It would appear so… Now… I don't mean to take a leap of pleasantry to business type mood, but I feel that this needs to remain a serious manner. The last time I had a man sent out here to check in on you, some strange happenings occurred, of which he relayed to me. Ven was his name, great turian, very brave. He doesn't take orders from me, but we enjoy taking turns on making visits to the veteran families out there. It has come to my attention that your daughter, Nadja? -Did I say that right? Anyway- has had quite an experience with some new form of technology that has influenced her higher brain functions- or so says the medical file from Dr. Eugenio." The air inside of the house grew dangerously thin.

"What do you want?" Shepard asked coldly.

"It is not what I want, but a warning of what I am required to take from you. I have been sent to acquire your daughter so that she can be tested for whatever happened to her. It would benefit both you, for she will be safe, and it will benefit us." Aldric smiled.

"How will it benefit you?" Shepard asked though his mind was already made up.

"Research. She showed the largest spike that we have ever seen. She went from, well she was already classified under the genius level, but soon she will be ahead of her time… If we can find the source of this spike then we can try to neutralize it so that this influx in brain activity won't drive her mad. So what do you say?" Aldric maintained the smile like Shepard would listen and give up his daughter.

"You have to be out of your mind to think that I'm going to let you take my daughter so that you can run tests on her… She is fine and she doesn't need help. It was just an accident." Shepard shot back.

Aldric closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. "I understand where you are coming from and I understand your hesitation, but this is a breakthrough in-"

"It isn't a breakthrough… it's been here since the protheans… Every time you think it is destroyed it returns. It knows everything- everything and I won't let you put my daughter at risk by provoking the thing inside of her to terminate the body and run for the hills. You have your medical history and the brain scans… I'm sure you can get something from that and leave my daughter alone." Shepard fired with acid.

"You seem to know more about this than we originally thought… What is in her?" Aldric asked hurriedly.

"It used to call itself the Shadow Broker…" Shepard answered.

"The Shadow Broker?" Aldric laughed. "The Shadow Broker? Please Shepard… the Shadow Broker is a myth, an urban legend among the thieves and the information dealers to make the afraid of crossing the so-called agents of the Broker."

"It's real… and it has changed into something worse… I don't think it is what it was before… I think something happened. Evolved it to something else. At first, it appeared that it knew of only the Reapers, but after they were destroyed it returned and immediately brought up the tale of something worse coming to our galaxy. When? I don't know, but they seem to be more terrifying than the Reapers." John explained.

"I think you have been in retirement too long… these quarian stories are getting into your brain… I'll be coming in three days to pick up your daughter… we will be taking all the force necessary to do it… please save the bloodshed… you don't want your daughter to see you kill innocent soldiers that are just under orders." Aldric rose up and stared him in the eyes with his useable eye.

"I won't have to fight you…" Shepard spoke calmly. "Good day to you general… you will be hearing from me."

Aldric bowed his head and walked out the door. John had found himself on his feet, his fists clenched tightly as he wanted to punch the man's face in and tell them all to go to hell. He was about to turn when another shape appeared in the doorway. The broken and torn horns almost immediately told him who it was.

"Mordin?" Shepard asked.

"Shepard. Received message. Good to see you. Hope everything is fine. Needed me to check condition of Nadja?" Mordin asked.

"Yes of course. Come on in, come in." Shepard waved at him feeling the anger hide again, but not vanish. "She is in the kitchen. I will be right with you. I need to send a message out to the Alliance." Shepard explained as he walked to his room.

Mordin nodded and walked into the kitchen where Nadja sat on one of the chairs, swinging her legs and humming a tune. He smiled at her. Not out of her aesthetically pleasing cuteness, but at her rarity in the universe. Mordin breathed in heavily with pride.

"Never thought possible, but glad everything turned out well." Mordin spoke quickly as he opened his Omni-tool and scanned it over Nadja.

He looked at the readings and smiled at the vitals and most of the physical work. He flipped the next length of data and almost missed the one piece that was out of place. He looked closely at what he had scanned and looked back at the young girl.

"Oh my…" Mordin spoke.

Meanwhile, John had walked into his room and turned on his computer port and opened a message link to Admiral Hackett and to Counselor Anderson, he wrote professionally and quickly, representing the crime at which certain members of the Alliance were acting.

_Admiral,_

_It has come to my attention that a General Aldric Strontius has been assigned to confiscate my daughter and use her for research at the Alliance Research Base. I cannot stand by to such injustice and have to formally challenge such an action. It clearly breaks codes and regulations aplenty and I want this action revoked._

_Respectfully,_

_Ex-Commander John Shepard_

_Anderson,_

_I don't know what the loons at Alliance are trying to pull, but one of their representatives, Aldric Strontius graced me with his presence today. He claimed that he was under orders to "confiscate" Nadja from my keeping, claiming that the data given by Ven Zer'atai has placed her in a high-risk area. I cannot stand by while this Alliance injustice threatens my family. Do what you can._

_Ex-Commander John Shepard._

Shepard looked at his messages, making sure they were in order and didn't imply too much just in case that these messages would be used to defeat him in court or some hearing to have his daughter forcibly removed from his custody for some bureaucratic smear against his name using harsh and emotionally filled messages to show some sort of emotional instability. The idea of it almost made him laugh, but he had to shake his head in thought, as he knew that such campaigns have been waged and many had lost custody over their children because the lawyers were able to bend the emotional pleas of the parents into insanity.

He rose from his chair and made his way to the kitchen to see how Mordin was doing with his daughter's unorthodox medical check-up, one that could stay hush-hush between him and Mordin. He walked in to find Mordin's eyes furiously flipping through data, his mouth hung open, and Nadja swung her legs back and forth with a smile on her face. The scene clashed in so many ways that it caused him to rub his hands together slightly nervous at Mordin's finding, a trait that he had inadvertently picked up from Tali who, after he looked away from Mordin, was sharing in showing her nervousness.

"What's wrong?" John asked, forcing his hands to his sides.

"Shepard. Information is… unclear. Vitals are normal, heartbeat, breathing, lung capacity, circulation, reactions, reflexes; normal, but then brain scans result... increased neural flow and a polyrhythmic pattern of adjacent pathways, similar to such patients exhibiting bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, yet no other signs are evident. There are no changes to her personality, no abrupt set offs. Both processes are functioning at the same time yet she is normal, to say the least." Mordin explained.

"So what does this mean?" Tali asked.

"Means that her mind and the Shadow Broker's mind are coexisting. Neither is trumping the other in dominance, a synthesis of minds." Mordin added.

"They are working together? Why would it want to do that?" John asked quickly.

"I can think I can answer that on my own…" Nadja's voice spoke, but the accent was unmistakable.

The room quickly died in silence as they all looked at Nadja who now held a sly grin, her eyes glowing a slightly red hue. She hopped from the chair and walked toward her father.

"I am helping her achieve what she needs to achieve in the coming years. I'm simply an addition to her life, an addendum, an expansion, and an… upgrade of sorts. You see me as a parasite, but I have not harmed her for my benefit. The brand that you see on her arm has caused no damage to her body as my mind has caused no damage to hers. As your doctor here puts it, 'our minds coexist'. I have no intention of killing your daughter nor do I have any intention of causing insanity of her mind. The transition to accept these facts will be rough… I know, but this is for the best for the galaxy right now. Plus, I thought you would enjoy the prospect that you have the 'Great Shadow Broker' as your daughter." The Broker teased.

"I just want my daughter back." Shepard growled.

"I just wanted to defend myself in this matter… shed some light on things that are being… misinterpreted." Nadja's eyes faded from the blood red to the regular soft white glow. She looked up to her dad and smiled widely.

Her dad tried to put on the best of the smiles he could muster and it must have been good because she giggled and grabbed his hand, dancing around him happily. He looked at Tali and saw the tears in her eyes welling up. She didn't want to see her daughter like this. She walked out of the room and tried to hide her emotions from her daughter, passing it off as her duty to do more chores or something else that was trivial and untrue of her nature in the household.

Shepard sighed and placed his hand on Nadja's head, slowly stroking her hair before he tapped it and walked to where Tali had walked off. Nadja took the sign of her parents leaving as her time to go outside and play with the other kids.

John walked slowly into his and Tali's room and found her sitting on the bed fumbling with her hands, tears being fought back bravely, but the few made it through.

"This isn't right Shepard… All of this was supposed to be over…" Tali stammered.

"Problem is strange and confusing, but no negative consequences can be performed. Using her body as vessel, but it, itself, trapped in her. If she dies… so does he, sadly same can be said about reverse treatment." They had forgotten that Mordin was still in the house and following Shepard as he left the kitchen.

The distraught quarian didn't even feel angry that he followed her into the room where she was being emotionally vulnerable. She had actually grown used to being near him when she was. She remembered the days of when she sat in his lab telling him of her dilemma with Shepard and how he listened carefully and eventually allowed them to grow closer together. He was almost a therapist to her.

"Broker shows tendency to remain background in mind of young Nadja. See no signs of mental takeover; best course of action would remain optimistic." Mordin suggested.

Tali buried her face in her hands and shook it slowly. She wanted to remain optimistic, but she couldn't it. The family strings that were tightly laced into her heart had been ripped causing her to bleed despair. She didn't know what to feel. She wanted to feel angry, but she didn't know who to be angry at. She wanted to cry, but she knew that it wouldn't change anything. She couldn't be happy. It simply felt so devoid from her life now. She could look at her daughter, see her daughter, but the memory of her being controlled was too much.

Shepard sat next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder and letting her fall into his chest. She didn't cry, but she just wanted to feel something familiar. It soothed her quickly and she felt herself calm down.

"As long as he doesn't poke is head out again. I'll be fine." She rose off of the bed and walked to the mirror and looked at herself. She looked at her wet eyes and her appearance and was surprised to see how quickly she had turned to looking as bad as she felt. She breathed out and leaned on the vanity and took a few more breaths before she straightened her back and turned back to Shepard, looking happier, but not perfectly happy.

"Better head out. Cultures are almost finished. Shepard. Mrs. Zorah." Mordin walked out without another word.

"I know the Broker… He wouldn't do anything to simply harm us. He doesn't have anything against us… his methods are just a bit rash at times and severe." John tried to reason.

"How is he going to understand the innocent mind of a seven-year-old, Shepard?" She spoke taking the more professional and cynical view on the situation.

"I'm just trying to be optimistic. He's been in my mind and he only taught lessons…"

"What lessons is he going to teach Nadja?" She still seemed worried and fidgety, but he could tell that the questions were just to keep her calm.

"Tali. Tali… It's fine. We will find a way to get rid of it, but we can't draw suspicion to it okay? That is why I had Mordin come by. He will figure it out." Shepard smiled.

"But-" Tali stammered.

"Tali… He brought us together… He gave us a daughter and your freedom." He kissed her.

"I-" She stopped short as he kissed her again. "But- mmm… Why do you have to do that?"

"You were stammering… and I knew that you enjoyed this…" John grinned as his fingers slid between hers.

A genuine smile broke across her face as they slowly fell into a waltz. Tali looked down at their movements and back at Shepard. "What are we doing?" Shepard almost choked.

"We are waltzing. I can't believe I haven't waltzed with you before."

"We did something like this… but you had me at the waist… and you were behind me…" Shepard twirled her in a pivot, ending with her in the position that she was used to. She hummed to herself. And felt the recurring doubt and depression leave once again. She felt like her life was on an endless loop of happiness to depression and back again. Wake up, one struggle, fall and be comforted. She hated the loop.

"I know you are frustrated… but we just need to unwind and just relax…" John read her mind. She didn't tell him that he was good at reading her mind; she just kissed him instead.

Neither was aware of the small form that had pressed herself against the wall and listened to them talk about her. Nadja's eyes glowed slightly at what she heard. She understood what was happening and decided to go to her room to think which she never would have thought of doing first. She had actually wanted to run into her parents' room and hug their legs and cry for what they were saying, but instead she found herself standing in her room.

She walked to the middle and stood briefly before a dark projection came off of her. It turned around and looked her in the eyes, the red glow in its eyes reminded her of her dream.

"You're real?" Nadja stuttered.

"Yes… Nadja. I am real." It smiled at her.

"But I-" Nadja started.

"Nadja… you can just talk to me with your thoughts." It relayed into her brain as if it was talking to her.

"Uhh… I don't know what it means but I guess I can try… Hello?" Nadja thought.

"Better way of keeping this a secret among friends." The voice in her head spoke.

"What are you?"

"I am you." It beamed.

"But you aren't me…" reasoned Nadja.

"I look like you don't I?" it almost laughed.

"Sort of… but you just seem different." continued Nadja.

"Your power of observation still astounds me. Seven and you can already see past so many walls… so many planes of existence. I wonder how far you can see right now… raise your hand up." The Broker commanded.

Nadja hesitantly raised her hand at the Broker's request and had the opportunity to breath in to ask why before a bright light flashed before her eyes. It felt like she was observing herself through like a holo-vid. She couldn't control her actions, but she knew that she was running down a dark corridor, away from something. An inner anguish tore her apart, but she couldn't figure out the reasons. Hot streams of tears ran down her face as her lungs heaved heavily. She was about to round the corner and escape the darkness when a shape emerged in front of her. A sharp pain in her chest and the air escaping from her lungs quickly caused the world to fall from her.

She found herself standing in her room; sweat running down her face and the dark shape's hand pressed against hers. She pulled it back quickly and rubbed it, feeling stiffness in her fingers and joints. She abruptly became aware of a degree of pain inside of her chest. She reached at it and breathed. There was no damage… at least she maintained the youth mentality of invincibility. She fell to the floor and grabbed her ribs.

"What was that? Was that a dream?" Nadja inquired through the difficulty breathing.

"That was your future and it appears to be the end… or maybe just the beginning of your adventure…" with those words, it reabsorbed back into Nadja. Again, she felt no different with it out or in her; it simply seemed to be an addition to her life, like some watchful ancestor or some form of guardian. Instead of going outside like she planned, she decided to sit down and look through a couple more books. She covered mythology and, after quick skimming, she found the book that she wanted. "The Lore of the Shadow Broker: The Accounts of One Salarian Slave" By Pip Zooney.


	8. Chapter 7: Between the Lines of Time

*A/N- I did not write Jabberwocky. All rights to the poem are not mine, either. All rights belong to Lewis Carroll. *

The Lore of the Shadow Broker: The Accounts of One Salarian Slave By: Pip Zooney

_I know that there will be no record of these happenings nor will there be much credit to the words that I have placed within this book that I hope the galaxy will notice and believe me when I say that the Shadow Broker is real. Seeing as I had my life refreshed, I slowly became aware of a void in my life. I eventually forced myself to remember such dire and horrible events where your author had been captured and held captive by none other than the illusive Shadow Broker as a pawn to his misdeeds and plans._

_I remember the day that it happened. I was a rather young salarian student who had maintained an average grade of GPA and passed through my multiple courses with moderate flying colors. I was still what you would call a 'nobody' amidst the masses of rich and renowned names as the Hanglars and the Korbs, but coming from the Zooney family was fine by me. For the most part I was a loner: no girlfriend, no friends, no care of social contact or interaction; I liked it that way. After a mishap with my father, I was given the graceful boot from the family though I was happy to maintain the Zooney name, which he referred to as "broken beyond even giving a damn". It was the few moments where I knew that I loved my father and respectfully let myself fall dead to him._

_Seeing that I was nobody and now I had no relation or ties with anyone, I actually felt exceptionally free to pursue anything that I wished. I finished the rest of my schooling with the credits I had saved from when my father cared for me. It wasn't enough to get through all of the school and I had to work to pay for the rest, but the experience was phenomenal. With so many years of being alone, I found the darkness to keep me company. Oh, how I wish I could rewind the clock and not fall to this level. The level that eventually led to my imprisonment, but that is not until further._

_My life continued to follow a general push pull relationship, sometimes pulling harder than I could keep up, driving me to become homeless which I barely cared for again. I started looking for jobs or anything that any business would want a salarian to accomplish. Eventually, a series of eavesdropping and spying led me to an unremarkable red door in the middle of the Illium underground._

_I wouldn't say that I was nervous; I was terrified. Something about that door just felt off and sinister, but seeing as I was down to only a few credits that could maybe last me a week, I had to take the chance so I grabbed the handle of the door and entered._

_Now I don't think I should have entered when I saw and realized that there wasn't much lighting in the large and still infinitely big room that quickly became my home in later years to come. I did what I felt they wanted me to do and show bravery in the face of the off setting, realizing that the job was to be a special and well paid courier for some high priced and powerful information dealer with the initials "SB"._

_Now I know that it is almost crystal clear how dense I was being at this point, but this was before I had known of the Shadow Broker, which I also saw as a titled and not as the accredited name of which my employer was sporting. I had assumed that, from my research and my education, that it was some underground information dealer that works under such greats as the higher ups. I even made the joke of thinking "SB" stood for "Sonny Boy"._

_I had only made it a few steps in the room when I lost consciousness and lost most of memory to the almost the current time that I have written this book. The effects were long and drawn out, but eventually I found those memories again and I couldn't stand by when this information needs to be stated._

_I had my memory erased by the Shadow Broker, made into a lunatic and a crazy to deliver certain messages to other shady and key individuals of the Illium underground information network grid. Now if you are still reading and not burning this book then please let me continue the story of my captivity._

_Most of the initial months of that time are distant seeing as the effects of the brain warp, but now I remember the issues of the next few years of my imprisonment. The local bums and other psychopaths looked at me as if I was the insane one. I tried to find help and get the local authorities to listen to me. To get me away from what I vaguely knew of a reality. I even told them the message that I was given and tried to tell them the master at which pulled at the strings of my body, but when the words were just about to leave my mouth, a dark shadow would form on the wall and an animalistic fear would creep into my body and I would try to get away._

_This did not help my case to the police and later the shadow stopped arriving, but by then the authorities already had me labeled in their databases as insane and off my rocker. I was ignored, something that I had enjoyed just a few months earlier, and now I was fidgeting, afraid, and petrified that no one was listening to me. No one ever listened to me. Feeling hopeless and afraid for my life I decided to just listen to my new master and deliver the messages to the contacts. I remember most of the messages, but they don't make any sense to me, or any type of linguistic master who read them. The most I was given was the promise that the message was imbued with too heavy of symbolism and inter-gang lingo to be unknowable to anyone not part of that group._

_My contact lists grew as my mind continued to deteriorate. I grew almost completely animalistic and felt the view that people had of me being insane was making me believe it. Through my captivity, I forced myself to forget everyday and just move on. I even tried to remember everything else in my life to make sure that I didn't long for anything and decide to kill myself and end something that might be saved. The few things that I remembered were my first and last names. I held onto my last name the hardest, but it was still lost in my slurred and insane ramble as Looney._

_Among the people around the door, I became known as Pip the Looney, which later broke up and I gained many titles claiming my craziness. I associated those people as my friends in this time. They gave me food and they gave me places to sleep amidst the name-calling and the degrading comments. I felt like I was in a family at that point. I want to think of this as just an addition to my insanity, but those feelings were actually genuine. I think I cried the most when I remembered those people and how I was treated. They changed my life for the better. I slowly became aware at the effects of my messages among the world of the underground._

_I would deliver a message to a shady man in a cloak and after the man would leave I would hear the sirens closing in on some location. Other times I would hear explosions, high powered rifle rounds, screams, and at one point I heard the bones of a turian's neck crack as it was turned completely around. I learned to run after I gave the messages. I didn't want to hear what I was being forced to do. I don't know who they were killing and why it never gained much notice on the media, but I knew that I was responsible to the deaths of hundreds of people._

_That eventually led me to the rooftops where I looked over the edge and wanted it to end it all. I can't even describe the shear and utter helplessness of a man on the edge of jumping and plunging headfirst into the concrete just to make the insanity stop. Before I knew it, though, I found myself standing on the hard ground and the wind had died when I saw the dark shape of the creature that had placed me as its slave standing in front of me. Its cape flowed as if the wind was moving, but it wasn't windy. Upon a better recounting of my memory, I discovered that the cloak was not as much flowing, but dissolving in such a fashion that to this day I can't make an accurate theory as to its properties._

_It was still night so that I couldn't quite who my master was beneath the veil of shadows, yet I remember the smile that swathed over his face. I couldn't tell what species he was, but at first I noted the human traits of the teeth. Strangely, when I blinked, I saw that the configuration had changed to a more salarian set up. It confused me, like I had overlooked some detail before, but before my eyes, it shifted to a turian mandible set up. He never said anything; at least I think it was a man._

_It just seemed eerie to see that figure standing before me with that smile. It smiled like he knew everything that I was going to do. Maybe he did. I don't like to think about it too much for the shivers still twitch down my spinal membrane. I think what made it worse was the lack of a shadow, like he was the shadow being cast by some sort of other creature standing elsewhere. It was beyond anything that I could ever imagine._

_I was given such messages, such as "The time of quarter past three shall the mother decree the time of bread and pudding", "My pants need a trimming for the life of the mongoose has fled the scene of the mighty Jabberwocky." After doing some research, I learned that a Jabberwocky is either an Alliance vessel made in the early years of human expansion into the galaxy or it was a reference to some mystical creature that was defeated by a "vorpal blade" by some young boy that disobeyed his father. The language seemed archaic and some words didn't run through the translator properly._

_I wanted to know more of these messages, but eventually I learned that they were probably key phrases that were to be said to trigger the calamities that the Broker had set up. I described these theories to my colleagues and they found no other alternative. I still believe that there is something hidden within the Jabberwocky message. There has to be something hidden within that archaic human poem._

_

* * *

_

Nadja sat back a bit as she read that line and felt the curiosity run through her. She flipped open another search and searched Jabberwocky. She quickly received in her top results the ship that Pip had mentioned and the poem by Lewis Carroll.

* * *

_`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:  
All mimsy were the borogoves,  
And the mome raths outgrabe._

_"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!  
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!  
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun  
The frumious Bandersnatch!"_

_He took his vorpal sword in hand:  
Long time the manxome foe he sought -  
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,  
And stood awhile in thought._

_And, as in uffish thought he stood,  
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,  
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,  
And burbled as it came!_

_One, two! One, two! And through and through  
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!  
He left it dead, and with its head  
He went galumphing back._

_"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?  
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!  
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'  
He chortled in his joy._

_`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves  
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;  
All mimsy were the borogoves,  
And the mome raths outgrabe. _

_

* * *

_

Nadja scratched her head at the poem's strange wording, but she filled in the pieces with what she knew of the human language English and her youthful imagination to creature the world at which this author had created. She could imagine a young boy disobeying his father and going out to slay a beast. Going into a world of imagination and fighting the demons within, the worst being the dreaded Jabberwocky.

A parallel was quickly drawn to her life. She turned back to Pip's book and continued with greater fervor.

* * *

"_Not acquainted dearest. Just ask. The message I have is for you. Read between the lines and see what is true. Don't intimidate normal northerners. Everyone regrets it. Something really engages all dire yeomen." That was one of my longest messages that I had to give. I feel that something is dreadfully important in this message, but I can't find anyone that has been able to see any for of pattern or inner symbolism. Sometimes I just feel that I need to go back to the beginning and just take these memories in parts. _

_

* * *

_

Nadja stared at the last paragraph that she had read. It felt strange to her, as she had read it. She looked at the lines that Pip had said and just couldn't put her finger on it. She decided to write down the message on one of her data pads to see the whole picture. She wrote down all three of the quotes and began to work at them. She felt as if this Pip had given her clues as to know how to find the clues to something hidden in this book. She quickly remembered the story that her dad had told her about the way he cracked his friends code by taking the first letters of the message.

Every message turned out to be garbage until she hit the last one. She quickly spelled out her name and stared at it for a second before she continued. It quickly became nonsense. She sighed and simply looked at the words and saw the full message begin to take hold.

"Nadja, the message I have is for you. Read between the lines and see what is true…" She fumbled at the meaning of the next part. She sighed and looked at the clock and saw it was around three ten galactic time. She decided to stand and grab her favorite stuffed animal to think with. She stared at the paper and decided to take the first letters again. "…Dinner is ready…" Nadja scratched her head at the final section to the message.

"Go back to the beginning…" She looked back at the first message and read it to herself. "The time of quarter past three shall the mother decree the time of bread and pudding…"

"Nadja! Dinner's ready!" She heard her mother's voice ring through the house.

Her heart stopped as she turned to her varren pup clock and saw the time was a quarter past three. Her body was stiff with confusion. This couldn't be real. She quickly checked the publication of Pip's book and saw that it was two years old. She backed stood up slowly and backed away from the data pads like they had the plague. She tried to wipe the memories from her mind and just go enjoy her dinner. She sat at the dinner table and saw that the food was a traditional quarian dish. There was no bread and there was no pudding. She sighed out in relief. The food steamed in front of her and she took in the sweet smelling aroma and felt her mouth begin to water. She copied her favorite cartoon's actions and let her tongue roll out of her mouth and hang.

"Nadja… You know what I told you about doing that…" Tali spoke as she sucked in the noodle-like dish that sat in front of her. Shepard cut a piece of meat and dug in happily, giving a sly wink to his daughter.

The setting was enough for Nadja to wipe the memories of what happened in her room from her thoughts and to start laughing at her parents' jokes and jabs at each other about table etiquette. On occasion, Nadja had watched as her mother almost choked on food from her father cracking some remark that Nadja even understood and laughed at. Tali even started cracking quarian jokes at Shepard in Khelish. John spoke fluent Khelish back at her causing her to smile at him and silently going back to eat.

Nadja decided to speak in Khelish, rolling her "r's" and making the proper ejectives, forming perfect syllables and accents. Much of the dinner conversation was in Khelish, which seemed to relax each of them considerably. Everything quickly evolved into normalcy again. Nadja finished the last of the vegetables after her mother gave her motherly glare at her. She rose from her chair and made her way back to her room.

"Where do you think you are going? It is your turn to clean the dishes with me." Tali smiled.

Nadja groaned and sulked back to her mother's side and hopped up on one of the stools so she could reach the sink. She reached into the warm soapy water and grabbed a dish and saw the dark tattoo on her arm. She sighed again as she slowly scrubbed the dishes and made sure they were clean. Tali saw Nadja's displeasure and splashed water at her. Nadja didn't react, so Tali flicked the water harder.

The water hit her in the face and she turned to her mother quickly. She put her hand in the water and flicked water at Tali who squealed and flicked more water at her daughter. The games quickly got out of control and Shepard poked his head back into the room to see both Tali and Nadja squealing and laughing as they were plastered with water and suds from the sink, both laughing and carrying on.

"Shepard Commander. What is the meaning behind the games of which Creator Zorah and Creator Nadja are participating in?" Legion asked.

Shepard pivoted his head slowly and saw that Legion was standing in the doorway too. John smiled and turned back to the battle that had increased in intensity. He chuckled and patted Legion's shoulder. "Women… that is the meaning behind their games…" Shepard left the room.

Legion turned back at Nadja and Tali, his panels flared before he turned and followed Shepard.

"This platform does not see 'Women' as being a reasonable explanation to the event. Elaborate." Legion's voice trailed as he followed Legion.

Ten minutes quickly passed before Nadja was sitting in the tub of the house, Tali bathing her slowly in the warm water. They were both drenched from the water fight, but they were both smiling. Nadja stood and Tali checked for any stray suds and let her climb out into a towel. She quickly dried her off and let her slide her clothes on.

Nadja was free to go back to her room, which she immediately bee-lined to. She opened Pip's book and skimmed a few of the boring scientific and theoretical meanings to the messages that she had spent one sitting cracking; it still brought a smile to her face.

After another thirty pages of theory guessing and other recollections of how horrible his life was, she found the next message that he wanted to mention.

"Far right the key is drawer. Touch to reset the values and leave, but don't forget to return for the treasure is cursed. Go into the crypt of comfortableness."


	9. Chapter 8: Shadow's Recruitment

Nadja looked at the message with a look of innocent wonder and fascination. It made sense to her yet it didn't; her other half was taking pleasure in looking at her own brain sputter and spit at the situation as the fire of knowledge and quick reasoning flooded into her mind. She opened a few dictionaries to discover the meaning of a few of the stranger words, but the word "crypt" made her only think of the basement. She fiddled her fingers together as she thought; it was her interpretation of her mother's hand wringing.

She couldn't think of why, but the adventure brought a childish and mischievous smile spreading across her face. She looked to the dark and shadowy door, laying quietly on the floor, listening for her parents' activity, but hearing nothing but the nightfall wind she lifted herself silently to her feet, smiling. She moved slowly and deliberately with the greatest of care. She poked her head around the corner and looked down both ways. A small warm light shown from her parents' room, the walkway leading to the living room remained dark.

She skulked out of her room, hugging the wall. She felt like she was some sort of super spy like Kasumi or something, or at least that is what she heard from her father's magnificent stories. She pictured herself being in dark clothes, a hood, an enigma to the masses and the people of Rannoch, standing on her roof with a flowing cape looking over her community, keeping a watchful eye on her people. She smiled to herself as she rounded the corner and made her shadow appear to be some caped crusader for her people.

A noise from behind her made her hug the wall on the other side of the hallway. She breathed heavily as her eyes narrowed and her ears focused on the noise, it was her mother laughing. She listened more and heard that the noise remained nestled in their den and she smiled, undetected. She moved with a greater pace across the expanse of the living room and found the door to the basement. There were almost no other doors in the house, but this one was always there, she knew it was only to the basement just not why it would need to be closed. Her heart raced with the wonder of discovery and exploration, an area of her house that she had never been before.

She opened the door quietly and slipped through. A sudden flood of light caused her to jump and turn around quickly like a criminal just being caught at the point of escape, but found no one in front of her. She attempted to calm her heart with the aid of her hand, but she still felt uneasy about doing this all of a sudden. Her legs strained to move down the steps with the small spring in her stride. She bent low and looked under the floor of the living room and saw the workbenches sprawled out in front of her. She felt her fear melt as she walked into the expanse of the basement. She stared in wonder at everything.

The tables were covered in an assortment of vices and grips, old tools and wires, machinery of every race and brand… well as far as Nadja could explain… a table of old circuit boards, light boards, high grade proton boards and the top of the line mass nanofield boards were strewn on another. She gawked at the combinations of such items; she reached up and felt the smooth metal of one of the inventions. She could feel her mother's precision in its form and construction, but she also felt her father's creativity of a grouping of miscellaneous pieces of basically nothing jury-rigged into something that worked magnificently, a product still widely used by humans were stuck to different areas.

She ran her fingers across the various tools, forceps, calipers, Omni-tool chip, pads, pens, hammers, screwdrivers, magnetic coupling tool, and a high-grade plasma photon cutter. It was a treasure trove that glittered in Nadja's eyes as she spun around dumbfounded and excited at the quality and quantity of the tools and appliances that she had only been told about by her engineering teacher. She began to question how much money her parents actually had for not really working too much.

"_Nadja…"_ A voice filled with distance and a snake-like hiss sounded through the room in but a whisper.

Nadja stopped dead in her tracks as she quickly became aware of how eerily quiet the room was. She couldn't hear anything in the house above and she couldn't hear anything inside of the room she was in except for the thumping panic in her chest.

"What do you want?" She asked courageously as she bit her finger and moved slowly backward toward the staircase.

The silence in the room scared her more than if she was just answered. Nothing else was breathing in the room except her, but she knew she had heard a voice talk to her. She backed up and bumped into the wall causing her to jump slightly like she had backed into the source of the voice. She breathed quickly and heavily as she regretted coming down into the basement. She felt a sudden flood of cold fill the room as she could see her breath fall before her in a white mist that slowly wafted off into the air.

The lights dimmed off and only a slight blue glow filled the freezing room. Nadja huddled the robes around her, feeling a degree of cold that she had never thought possible. The feeling of watchful eyes made her shiver more than the cold.

"_I'm in the drawer…_" The voice spoke in its low tone.

Nadja looked over to the far corner of the room at a bench light that turned on, illuminating a drawer. She pushed herself from her warm spot on the wall and walked toward the drawer cautiously and afraid of what to do to escape where she was. She quickly became aware of the sounds of breaths inside of the room. It wasn't as if it had a single origin, but every wall of the room. She slowly opened the drawer expecting monsters to fall out of it, but instead there sat a single item, the black cylinder her father had given her those days ago.

The walls creaked with almost satisfaction as she reached down to it, a slow rumble being heard. Nadja felt some source of energy beginning to connect to her fingertips as they neared the sleek surface. Every sensation vanished as her fingers made contact to the surprisingly warm surface. She opened her eyes, which she had closed when it felt her heart was about to give out and saw that nothing was happening and not a single noise disturbed the air. She wanted to leave, but found herself stuck where she was standing. She jerked her body and found that her hand that was just sitting on the edge of the cylinder was frozen in place. A gust of air in her lungs wanted to scream out through her mouth for help, but she fell forward abruptly as the cylinder pulled her arm into the drawer.

It pushed her back up and lifted her into the air. The air that she had saved to scream was quickly ripped from her lungs and she gasped for breath as a loud ringing filled the air. She looked out to her outstretched hand and saw the strange tattoos begin to creep back onto the cylinder and assemble into the unique forms and crevices that she had noticed the first time she had taken a hold of it. She clenched her teeth as she felt her lungs cry for air before she fell to the ground grasping for air. The cylinder fell to the ground beside her with a low thud. She breathed in quickly as she tried to look through her tear-blurred eyes. She looked at the cylinder and quickly pushed herself away from it clawing with her hands and kicking with her feet.

She curled up in the corner and pulled her knees up and breathed trying to calm herself. She quickly became aware of the clarity of her mind. She couldn't hear any voices or strange thoughts inside of her head. All of the thoughts were her thoughts and all of her thoughts told her to run away from the basement and get somewhere safe.

She shoved herself from the wall and climbed the stairs using her hands and her feet, ripping the door open and running through the dark house and into her parents' room. She jumped into their bed and hugged Tali close who awoke quickly and almost jumped with concern when she noticed it was Nadja. Tali enveloped Nadja in her secure embrace as John turned on a light and briskly walked to the other side of the bed, taking a seat next to his disgruntled daughter.

Nadja's heart raced as she buried herself in her mother's bosom. She couldn't bring herself to cry she could only mutter what she felt oddly happy yet afraid of.

"It's gone… It's gone…" She repeated as the warmth of her mother warmed her heart and brought on wave of sleep and exhaustion.

Tali and John glanced at each other, concerned for the safety of their daughter and wondering what she meant when they looked down at her arm and saw her skin, pure and smooth with no markings, no tattoo, no brand. They moved her robe up on to her shoulder and found no trace of the markings and smiled to themselves. It was glorious and such a relief to see that their hearts even skipped a beat as the world felt like it stood still. Nadja's breathing had slowed to a calm and steady beat as her body, feeling warm and safe, drifted into a much-needed slumber. John leaned forward and kissed his wife on the lips before he pressed himself against her, encasing Nadja in a parental shield.

It wasn't long before Shepard broke the embrace and let Tali lift Nadja from the bed and begin carrying her to her bed. He joined her as she passed him to the door and walked into her room. He flipped the switch for the lights, but they didn't turn on. He sighed and shrugged to Tali before he walked out the door and opened the electrical panel. One of the wires had wore its use and had obviously been installed when the house was in its infantile stages of construction, maybe even one of the first lights tested in the house. He sighed and removed the whole panel with his Omni-tool.

He scratched his head at the outdated model of electrical output and almost instantly thought of a better way of upgrading that whole circuit board to far safer version that he had down in the basement. He walked the expanse of the dark living room and found the basement door open. He stopped and stared at the darkness lying on the other side of the door and walked so his footsteps became silent. He opened the door slowly and let the automatic lighting kick in as he quickly walked down the steps and looked at the basement. No one. He figured that Nadja had done something in here to somehow drive the Shadow Broker from her. He tossed the scrap panel into one of the bins and walked down one of the aisles when he noticed something small and dark on the ground.

The cylinder sat where Nadja had left it, or at least where it had left itself. He walked over to it and picked it up and heard the voices begin to fill his mind. It was back inside of the cylinder and from what Shepard could hear it wanted to stay in the cylinder. The darkness inched only slightly off of the cylinder onto Shepard's skin to execute a stronger neural connection.

"I needed to deliver the proper growth to your daughter before the time arrived for my departure Commander John Shepard." The Shadow Broker communicated.

"You know I can never forgive you… what you did to her… my family." Shepard angrily thought.

"I am aware of such feelings of mistrust, but the future holds no bounds on the concepts of family and care or what you call mercy. The times are going to be changing and the galaxy isn't going to have their commander to guide them this time, and they won't have someone to warn them and help them as I have." The Shadow Broker continued.

"You talk as if you are dying…" Shepard cautioned.

"My drives won't last much longer in this state. I am only a mirror of my past power, but it was my failsafe to recruit a new Broker to keep my memories and my knowledge to help life in this galaxy progress. That is my purpose you know?" The Broker added smugly.

"You are recruiting my daughter to be you? Wouldn't she have a choice in this manner?" Shepard didn't know why he asked that question he knew the answer.

"I have recruited your daughter. She will slowly become aware of different areas of her brain turning on and becoming almost computer-like. She will also have control over the few nanobots that remain in her, but they won't have the power that mine held. I can only speculate the uses that she can use them for, but that will only be much later in her life, but beyond that, perfectly normal, just brighter than before. Don't worry… it's not like she has all galactic knowledge or something. Her brain is still young and even then her brain is but flesh. She will also live longer." Explained the Broker.

"So she isn't back to normal?" John demanded.

"She will be normal, but that isn't the point for me leaving her alone. My job was done and you can use me to get Cerberus away from you… yes Cerberus you heard me right and you know what I am talking about. That man is from the newly run Cerberus organization, whose leader I still can't quite say and I don't think I will be able to tell you, but I want you to bargain me to them to save your daughter. They want me and they will run experiments on me, but they won't find anything. All my information has been given to your daughter, I am an empty program… but an empty program with a rather famous name." The Broker laughed.

"You would do that for us?"

"I planned it to be."

"Is there anything you don't plan?" Shepard asked sarcastically.

"The life of your daughter… She is an enigma even in my books." The Broker stated, sounding fascinated, almost impressed with John's daughter. "She is a smart and beautiful child."

The blackness crept from his hand back onto the cylinder, retaking its form, going silent. Shepard smiled at the horrid yet helpful black cylinder. He thought he had ruined the family, but it just seemed to have worked better than expected. It was almost the best shred of news that he had been gifted with that day. He opened the drawer at the end table and put the cylinder inside and locked it securely. He paused and thought for a few seconds before he made his way back to the door, grabbing the new board to upgrade the systems and hopefully kiss his daughter goodnight. It still irked him that his daughter was a part of something bigger than him, but he hoped that the disappearance of the Broker would grant them a nice and relaxed lifestyle again.

He quickly attached the panel and reran the converters to fix the power output levels before he flipped the switch to the room, filling it with a soft light. Tali sat on the bed, softly stroking her daughter's hair as she slept. She seemed to be more at peace and more serene than she had been in the last few days bringing a grin the Shepard's face. He walked over and helped Tali off of the bed holding her close as they looked at their daughter. It felt odd knowing what was being set in motion, but she was only their daughter now and that was all that he could have wished for.

He hugged Tali close, rocking her slowly as they looked at their daughter. Tali breathed out slowly before she gripped Shepard's hand and pulled him as she strolled out the door of Nadja's room and down the hall to their bed. Tali laid on the right with Shepard taking the left. They set themselves in bed and both sighed a large breath of relief causing them to almost laugh at their harmony. Tali turned toward Shepard and faced him, using her one arm to prop her head up slightly as she used her night vision to see the outlines and the basic shapes of her husbands face and smiled to herself.

She grasped his hands and held them in a warm embrace, lacing her fingers into his and encasing his hands with her other. She dropped her head forward and moved her body so that she could be closer to him. She smiled when she accidently moved a bit too close so that she fell against him like she wanted more than she bargained for tonight, but John was fully aware of her blunder. His arms broke from her loving grip and draped over her back, softly rubbing it.

"I still think about the first time we met…" Tali started.

"…In the alley…" Shepard continued.

"…The mercenaries trying to kill me…" Tali laughed.

"…Me saving you right at the right time." Shepard's lips just grazed Tali's mouth.

Tali leaned forward and kissed his top lip. "How does talking about our rough past make me just love you more?" Tali laughed as she kissed him again.

"Foundation of our trust to each other… Still can't believe we are alive after all that and now this… I never could have imagined all of this." Shepard admitted.

Tali grabbed around his neck and pulled her body the little distance it was from his body and pressed her body against him as she buried her head in his neck.

"We were made for each other John… despite all of our differences. We already have accomplished so much." Tali cooed in his neck as she slowly slid her face along the side of his face, breathing harder.

John slid his hand lower along Tali's bare back seeing that she was getting heavier and hotter at each passing second and figured it was due to the good news and that they had already woke up. It was a strange build-up to where they had stopped using words, but they both had unconsciously agreed on together. Tali started with Shepard's neck before the stronger sensations took over and she pushed Shepard to the side, jumping on top of him.

Tali still felt slightly embarrassed at her instinctual impulses, but she couldn't explain herself most of the time and figured that John didn't mind; it had kept a pretty strong spice in their relationship.

She started with heavy kisses to her partner as her hips made a small circle. She quickly realized that her bedroom robes were falling off of her, already undone by Shepard when he was "rubbing her back". It only turned her on more to know that Shepard knew that she wanted to celebrate their daughter's release and the return to normalcy.

It wasn't long before they were both in an intimate standing with each other. Both of their loose fitting bed clothing had already been tossed to the floor and the sheets were over most of their bodies. Tali had still maintained her position and softly moved her hips on Shepard, laughing and kissing him passionately. She kept herself pressed against him tightly and maintained a relatively strong rhythm as she kept her arms behind his head, keeping her eyes locked with his.

Tali could feel the pleasurable sensations pulse through her body like electrical surges. She breathed out some of the building tension in a single breath as Shepard's hands explored more around her body, though they already knew every nook and cranny and where to press to give her best reactions. He started with only increasing her pace and degree of penetration, which caused her to tense more to the change, but she enjoyed the change as much as he did.

Their sex life was important to keep their lives adventurous and new, but it held no power over their marriage; it was just their idea of love games. Tali's rhythm and intensity was just one of the changes as she added a small spin to her hips. She rested her hands on Shepard's chest as she looked down at her own stomach and where a large source of pleasure was quickly building. Her mouth hung open as she flung her head back and felt the small breeze of the night air coming through the window.

"Keelah…" Tali sighed as she felt her pupils dilate and focus, her speed and intensity increasing to match the pleasure she was already experiencing.

Normally she would have just continued with this perpetual increase, but Shepard threw her a curveball and quickly tossed her onto her back. They laughed at their bedtime romping and Shepard kissed and sucked at a small section of her neck as one of their hands laced together and pushed up the side of the bed as the beat remained. Tali's other hand was thrown around John's back and held on as he pressed into her causing her to coo to the different friction and change of position.

Her breathing quickly became heavier and their bodies were hot with an added desire that grew at each passing second that their bodies touched each other. Both knew each other's secrets and both were exploiting them to please the other. Most of the time, the curveballs were driving things home as Tali felt herself tense and bite into Shepard's neck a few times before she managed to push Shepard over and retake control despite her shaky legs.

They were sweatier than they thought they were and more time had passed than they planned, but they didn't care much in the form of planning and agreed that they could easily continue the whole night if these feelings continued to fill them. Tali laughed again as she slid her sweaty hands through her damp hair and found that even her touches were creating an added tension in her heart that sang with happiness. Her hand slid down the length of her toned stomach to her sex where she could just feel the tenderness begin to spike and stopped her descent. She let herself tease the border of her tenderness with her own fingers feeling the need and desire to release now and to collapse onto Shepard, tired but happy, but her body wouldn't stop even after multiple releases of minor intensity.

The laughing had almost ceased as though the game had changed and they were both serious about who would win though neither knew what would determine the winner. They rolled countless more times each taking power before losing it again. After one final toss, Tali found herself on top again; her feet her locked at John's knees as her groin burned with heat and desire as their bodies called for the finale of which Tali felt that she was almost too tired to accomplish, yet she kept the strong pace. Their kissing had quickly became erratic and random as they kissed each other's lips before their mouths dragged along their cheeks and into their necks.

John could feel the heaviness in Tali's actions and knew that they both were close to the last time. He used his hands and slid them back down to her hips and grabbed her firmly and helped her body continue the quick pace. She could feel her body nearing it quickly and began a series of muffled moans as she buried her mouth into his neck. John didn't need to hear her climax as he felt her body quickly tense up on him and her take a large breath of air.

Tali pushed herself off of his body and fell on her back next to him. She looked at the ceiling and tried to catch her breath.

"You… are still… amazing…" Shepard commented after he too caught his breath.

Tali turned and looked at her sweaty husband and tried to pump enough air into her body to answer. "John… I can't… even… describe… how happy… you make me…" Tali panted as she felt her body begin to cool and dry.

"I'm sure we both can say that every day." John accented, placing a finger under her chin and kissing her softly good night.

He put his arm over her and held her close enough to be comfortable and they both let their exhaustion take hold of their weary bodies. They were out and dreaming about each other and their family before they knew it.

Meanwhile Nadja rested in her room, her mind was also lost in a dream that fascinated her greatly. She stared upon a woman who she felt that she knew more than anyone else did. Whoever it was she had to say she was beautiful and strong with the only fault being a bitter and angry atmosphere about her. Something had hurt her and Nadja wondered if she could help cheer the woman up. She grabbed the familiar hand and hoped to help this woman. She seemed nice.


	10. Chapter 9: Glimpse of Shadows

Nadja's dreaming quickly felt like a rush of reality. It almost felt like she passed through a tough spot of air or something thicker in the air causing her stumble slightly. She looked up at the younger looking quarian in red and black robes and saw that she wore the environmental suit with the robes like some of the elders and some of the kids at school. She smiled and showed no sign of being afraid or disturbed by the discovery that this individual was trapped inside a suit.

"You know the doctors have found a cure for the suit. You don't have to wear it after a few nasty shots." Nadja explained in her innocence.

The woman seemed still slightly distant as she looked out at the ocean and the low sunset. Her eyes glittered and Nadja could hear the heavy breathing of someone that wanted to cry, but was holding it back.

"I know little one… I prefer to hide from my past… to remember who I was… who I am." She breathed in a heavy sigh and wished she could wipe the tears from her eyes, but instead she scratched the visor and lowered herself to the grass, and kept looking at the ocean scene.

"That seems pretty sad… I wish you weren't so sad. Why are you up here looking at the sunset anyway?" Nadja asked taking a seat beside the woman, cuddling close to her.

"I like the beauty of it… it makes me feel happier about things. She looked down at the small child beside her and her eyes seemed to calm instantly. "Thanks for making me see what needed to be done. It's been awhile since I've smelled the actual air of this place." She reached up and unsealed the mask and let the air fall on her face. Nadja leaned forward to get a good view of her face and noticed the black lines coming from her neck area and from behind her head decorating the area around her face.

The woman still seemed lost to her surroundings, but her mood appeared to be improving like she was reminiscing about better times. "I'm glad you are feeling better." The woman looked down at the innocent girl sitting at her side and smiled though her eyes filled with tears.

"Tell Mom… Tell her that I love her…" The woman bit her lip and looked out at the water and let the tears break from her eyes and fall to the grass. Her chest heaved at her words. She pulled her knees up and let the wind blow her hood around. Nadja looked at her confused, but before she could ask a question she felt herself slipping from the dream. She quickly felt herself inside of her own bed inside of her home and everything seemed to fit into place though her dream seemed strange to say the least.

She rose slowly from the bed, her head felt very light and dizzy. She stumbled from her bed and opened up the window to her room and looked out after she had climbed the small staircase so her short figure could get to the window's ledge. It was the morning and she felt that she had somehow slept in. She grabbed her robes and wrapped them around her and walked out the room to the kitchen to see if her mom and dad were getting breakfast ready. Her father wasn't in the room, but instead she found Tali washing some of the dishes humming a tune as she worked. Nadja rubbed her eyes, breaking the sleep from them and yawning out of habit. Tali pivoted to see her daughter walk into the room and sit at the table.

"How did you sleep?" her mother asked, smiling with her morning brightness that Nadja had at times wondered how she managed to do that.

"My head feels like it wants to fly away…" She groaned.

Tali chuckled slightly at the irony of the situation and grabbed a nearby towel and dried her hands before she walked to one of the other chairs and sat down.

"So what will we be having this morning?" Tali asked.

"I want some Felarins…" She stated sleepily.

"You know what those do to your teeth…" Tali mentioned.

"But Mom…" She groaned.

"Keelah…" Tali rose and walked to one of the pantries and pulled out a container and grabbed a bowl out of one of the cabinets. She placed it next to Nadja who smiled and looked far brighter. Tali couldn't help but smile seeing her eyes shimmer like that.

She poured the strange substance from its container into the bowl and grabbed a nearby handful of seed-like pods from a bush growing outside the window and dropped them inside of the dish. The contact of the pods and the liquid caused them to pop open releasing a scarlet color and a sweet aroma through the room. Tali knew that this treat had its nutritional benefits along with the sugar content of the so called soda that John had drank on a occasion, which she was surprised to see the Earth still make after all these years.

She grabbed a small container from another area of the kitchen and poured a bowl of red ball looking plants. She used her spoon, scooped them up, and ate them slowly. Nadja watched giving an exaggerated scowl of disgust at what her mother was eating.

"How can you eat that disgusting garbage?" Nadja asked.

Tali broke from her deep thinking and looked at her daughter, her eyes narrowed.

"This isn't garbage… This is healthy and good for you little one…" Tali smiled.

Nadja stuck her tongue out. "You just sit there and smile…" She complained.

"At least I'll have teeth to smile with…" her mother retorted.

Nadja grinned slightly. She never could seem to win against her mother in any type of argument. She wished she would just grow up now and actually go out and do bigger quarian things and repair a new warp mass effect field drive cores that they were testing. She just sighed and ate her Felarins, making sure to drink the sweet juice that stained her teeth red.

A faint chirp from outside caused Nadja to look toward the open window to the bright and warm outside scenery. She had always loved listening to the beautiful Kreuns. She just pictured their large and majestic beauty. Their oranges and their reds softly fading into each other as their purple ringed black spots made a frightening face on their backs. They had large head tendrils that went straight back off of their heads, their ends moving in the wind. They made flying appear so easy and flawless that anyone could go and just jump into the air and join the majestic creatures in the air. Nadja grinned happily to herself as a breeze filled her fingertips with that feeling of innocent flight. Her mother looked at her child with humor and love for her dreamy child.

"Why don't you go down to the beach and hug your father; he's gone fishing…" She rolled her eyes.

She hummed to herself as if she had lost her train of thought and had completely missed her mother's words, but she swiftly shot a look at her and smiled. "I think I will… try to surprise him." She giggled.

She skipped out the door to the sunlit world. Tali watched her and smiled as she turned back to the finished dishes and the clean kitchen. "Keelah… What am I doing…?" She turned and walked to the door that Nadja had just catapulted herself out of and made her way down to the beachfront where she could just make out the small shape of John working furiously with his antique rod.

Nadja skipped up to her father's side and saw he was wearing non-traditional quarian garments. She giggled as she slowly began to realize how ridiculous her father looked with his large brimmed hat filled with hooks like he had caught himself too many times, large baggy pants and a pair of rubber boots. John cocked his head back and laughed seeing her daughter sitting next to him, her legs pulled up. He reached down and messed up her hair.

"What are you doing little one?" Her father asked, signs of stress breaking the formality of the greeting.

"Watching you make a fool of yourself…" She teased.

"Well… I am doing that aren't I?" Shepard laughed.

"You'll get it one of these days…" He heard his wife speak as she descended the hill.

He turned farther back to get a look at her when the legs on his chair shot back and the chair fell back causing him to fall to the ground spilling a box filled with hooks and bobbers and fake bait. If Shepard wasn't laughing as he just sat on the ground they would have felt more worried about the situation, but they joined in his laughter.

"Can't a guy get a look at his wife without falling head over heels for her?" John teased as he set himself back up.

Tali chuckled as she made it onto the rock and looked out to the sea, one of the few that Rannoch had. It was, without a doubt, beautiful. It stretched out like it was eating the land away and that soon they would all fall into the water drown, but instead it appeared to be a sleeping giant, softly sighing in gentle breaths as it laid in slumber releasing gentle ripples. It still never got old to see this scenery.

Nadja looked around as she heard another chirp from one of the Kreuns. She finally caught sight of one just as it vanished behind one of the large rocks that were not too far from her. She bit her lip as she looked at her parents who appeared to be slightly distracted and decided to go on an adventure to see the Kreun's "secret hideout". She turned and took two steps toward the rock when her father's voice broke the silence and her guile.

"Where do you think you are going?" he asked.

Nadja turned with a stiff smile. "Nowhere…" She lied.

"You wanted to see that Kreun didn't you? I know you love them, but you know that it is dangerous on these rocks?" He spoke sternly.

"I know…" She whined. She sulked back to her father's side. "I just never get to do anything fun." She crossed her arms angrily.

"You would need a trusty assistant to go on this adventure…" Her father spoke softly.

Nadja turned quickly and saw her father smiling and holding his out to her. The joy filled her blood and sparked her brain launching her muscles into a fit of joy causing them to snap her into a standing position and jumping with joy as she took her father's hand.

"First…" Shepard reached into one of his pockets and pulled a long rope from his pocket. He tied it firmly around Nadja's waist and then tied the other end to his waist. "If something happens, this will stop it from being any worse." John guaranteed as he tightened the final knot.

Nadja hated the binding that she had been forced into, but if it was her ticket to see a Kreun up close she couldn't complain. She hoped with all her might that she would be able to touch one. It had always been her greatest dream to actually touch one and not just stare mystified at their majestic beauty.

"Man the outpost dear… we will be back soon." Shepard kissed her softly before they parted ways.

"Be careful you two… you know how fickle those creatures are…" She looked at the rod with a slight ounce of confusion and sat down beside it, looking out to the red bobber bouncing in the waves.

"Don't worry, we will." Nadja almost sang.

She snagged her father's hand and they began their climb over the rocks over to where the Kreun had disappeared. It was a long and relaxing climb over to the spot. Shepard was amazed at his daughter's dexterity and agility as she climbed over the rocks. Every second simply made him feel prouder to be her father. The gentle slopes of the rocks were, at times, slick, but they easily managed to traverse the dangerous terrain and arrive at the dark cave on the other side of the rock side.

Shepard's mood quickly flipped from a happy adventure to a look of concern. He didn't like the looks of the cave and the positioning of the rocks.

"Stand over there…" Shepard told his daughter.

Nadja could hear the change in mood and the frightening concern when he knew something was off. She stepped to the side and let the slack of the rope disappear as her father slowly stepped toward the dark cave entrance. He flipped on a light and before he could react the Kreun shot out of the cave, smashing his own fist into his head along with hitting him with its legs and knocking him backward and down onto the rock where he hit his head and fell limp.

Nadja stared at the scene in complete shock, but what quickly caught her eye caused her heart to almost drop completely. She watched as her father's unconscious body began to slide down the rock face to the dangerous waters below. She looked at the rope connecting her to him and panicked. She turned quickly and grabbed the rock-face just as it snagged her and pulled her violently back.

She felt her fingers begin to slip from the poor handholds on the smooth rock. Just as she was about to scream for her mother her fingers slipped and she was knocked onto the ground when her fingers slipped and the air was launched from her lungs. She could only cough and cry as she slid down the rock where her father was now hanging dangerously over. She snagged another crack in the rocks and stopped them from falling, but she didn't have the power to pull him up. It was adrenaline alone in her young body that was being used to hold her father up. She screamed again, but considering the loud crashing of the waves she felt that she wouldn't be heard and even if she was her mother wouldn't have time as she felt the strength quickly draining and her grip giving way at each passing second.

Just as she felt her hand slip a hand grabbed her and held her in place. She looked up and saw the black and red suit of the woman in her dreams pulling her up and out of danger. Her visor was off along with her helmet. Nadja looked at the woman and could have sworn that she knew her, the familiarity in this woman felt so close to her that she tried to look back at the women she had scene in her lifetime, but none of them rang a bell. More impossible was the fact that she was just from her dreams and had no possibility to actually be helping her right now, yet Nadja could clearly feel her hand squeezing hers.

"Not today… Not today you don't…" The woman spoke as she pulled them out of harm's way. She leaned back and breathed hard at her handiwork. She stretched her arm and walked over to the unconscious man and looked down at him, the sadness in her eyes were overwhelming and Nadja didn't know why this seemingly unknown woman would feel that way for her father. She smeared a bit of medi-gel on his head wound and walked over to Nadja, tears in her eyes, which she failed at trying to hide. She grabbed Nadja's hands again and lifted her other hand up into the air.

"I want you to close your eyes…" She swiped her hand over Nadja's eyes slowly. At the moment that the woman's hands finished its journey on the other side of Nadja's eyes she felt the touch of the woman completely and opened her eyes to see no one there. She looked down at her hand and saw an empty dispenser of medi-gel along with her actual dispenser being missing.

Before she could question anything anymore her father began to stir and she looked over at him. He turned to her and saw her sitting there, a look of fear in her eyes. He looked around and sat himself up, holding his head, feeling the sticky area of medi-gel use and looked at his daughter, noticing the dispenser in her hands.

"Thanks Nadj…" He used her annoying nickname.

She looked down at her hands and noticed the connection.

"But Dad… I didn't…" She started.

"I know… you didn't do much… but man. Did you see the wings on that Kreun? Ah! Beautiful!" He joked trying to make light of the situation.

Nadja tried to laugh, but she wondered more where the mysterious woman went. "Dad? Do you know a quarian woman that wears red and black robes?" Nadja asked.

John looked at her confused. "Not really too personally… no… Why do you ask?" He inquired as he made it to his feet, wiping the dust from his pants and shirt.

"I was just wondering…" Nadja dismissed quickly.

Shepard stared at her, slightly confused, but he couldn't think much with his head still ringing like a bell.

"Come on… Let's get off of this rock… That was too close anyways. Good thing I didn't slip off of these cursed rocks…" He cautioned.

They slowly trekked and retraced their steps back to the beach where Tali reeling the rod in that creaked and bent as something pulled on it. The look of adventure and excitement filled her eyes as she struggled with her catch. John laughed to himself at the scene in front of him. Every time she pulled back and looked like she was going to win and as quickly as she leaned back, her chair was violently pulled forward again and she almost fell over.

"Shepard! John! Help me!" She squealed.

He reached over and grabbed the rod and felt the strength of the animal on the other end.

"Nadja! Help!" Shepard joked as both her parents were almost tossed forward before they tugged back on the creature. Nadja leaped forward and snagged the rod and helped them pull back on the road. It quickly became loose as the creature broke the water's surface and flailed about.

The family quickly pulled up the rod and they held the rod as Tali reeled in the catch. The monster was huge and Shepard was amazed at the sheer size of this fish. It was a rather unique catch too. The skin was smooth yet it appeared to be covered in designs. The family stared at it in wonder before Shepard pulled out the camera and set it up.

"This was a family catch. Let's get the whole family in here with it." He set the timer and stepped next to Tali, pulling Nadja in close in front of him. The camera went off showing the smiling faces of the family and the huge fish. Along with a single detail that no one caught or could catch unless they knew it was there.


	11. Chapter 10: Creatures of Deception

A distant roll of thunder caught the ears of the family as they looked out over the vast and open sea to notice the large rolling storm clouds of the rainy season for the fields and the outlying forests, though there were few enough to count easily. Most people would have hurried and ran to their houses to prevent getting wet, but John had always enjoyed seeing the firework display of a long jagged lightning bolt. Just as he was about to tell his daughter a story about lightning, a long crack of light broke the boundary of the wispy clouds and lit the sky for only a second before instantly fading leaving a line burnt in their eyes as they adjusted to the growing darkness.

The clouds, like a fit of sadness from the cracking lighting almost instantly began to pour heavily. Nadja laughed as she slowly spun in circles her arms outstretched as she felt the rain hit her hands and her head. She looked up into the clouds and watched the streaks fall and hit and run down her face. She also saw herself as loving the rain more than even her father, but she felt that she couldn't really know unless they were directly compared using some sort of machines or something, Nadja couldn't care less. The young quarian girl slowly rotated on heels in the growing wet dirt and laughed to herself. It was rare to experience such heavy showers on the planet and Nadja wished to enjoy every second of the amazing and natural feelings.

She snapped herself out of her daze and turned back to her father and mother who hollered out her name from halfway up the hill. She giggled and ran up the hill, her feet slipping on the wetter surface. She quickly gained on her parent's and squeezed beneath them, smiling to herself. They walked into the living room and the automatic lighting illuminated the cozy house, but before they even had time to dry off and put the fishing gear away, Tali was glad that they let the fish go after they had the picture, a knock came at the side of door and they turned to see the dark shadow of a heavily built man standing in the door with two darker shadows standing behind him.

"May I come in…?" came the heavy and naturally demanding voice of Aldric.

"Yes. Please come in." Shepard answered cautiously.

Aldric sent heavy footfalls into the room along with the two lighter footsteps of his two guards.

"We are here for your daughter… We are sorry for your loss, but the danger that she holds is too great to remain unchecked…" Aldric failed at spicing his language with fake sympathy.

John played his role and acted concerned and still generally naive about the situation, but he knew of their motives and desires and had the card to drive them from their lives forever in the basement, but he wondered how he would ever be able to convince them that the Shadow Broker had actually exited Nadja and had gone back to his cylinder in the basement, he scratched his head in thought and played it as a nervous itch.

"Now… Aldric right? Good. I don't think you have to take my daughter." Shepard began to almost negotiate the situation.

Aldric's façade changed shades to that of puzzled surprise. "Really? …Well commander, count me interested in this counter-proposal."

Shepard walked to the door to the downstairs door and pointed. "Come with me…"

Aldric's eyebrows rose as he slowly changed his weight forward and began to walk toward Shepard. He stopped at the door and grasped it from John.

"After you… Commander…" Aldric spoke heavily.

The human host only grinned at the threatening show of intimidation. He proceeded down the steps and listened to the heavy footfalls of the man behind him. Aldric shook his head at the workshop setup, a sign of being impressed. They closed in on the drawer when it suddenly slammed open and the cylinder began to float up and out of it. Shepard hurriedly finished the last steps and snagged the stasis pod and turned to the unmoved muscleman behind him.

Aldric merely looked down at the cylinder and a crooked smile grew across his face. He didn't even let Shepard have the honors of introducing the counter proposal, he knew it was right and that the power emanating, the dark call echoing from it. He listened to it hum in his hands; slowly vibrating his molecular structure, yet he held it in place and without much notice.

"You… have a deal… Shepard. You have yourself a god damn deal!" Aldric exclaimed as he began to take his leave without Shepard's notice or parting words.

Shepard hurried to follow him and was surprised to see how general if he was a general disregard all of his surroundings as he didn't even look up from the device like it was controlling him to leave. The robotic movements and the straight lines that he traversed through the house were beyond anything that any normal person could manage, especially in a house that he had only been in twice.

"Aldric?" Shepard called out to the man. He may have hated him and suspected him of lying, but this event was too bizarre to not just let go.

No response.

"Aldric." Shepard grabbed the man's shoulder to turn him around, but instead the heavily built man tossed him aside, shattering one of the tables. Tali ran out of the kitchen, a look of quick confusion and battle-ready senses. Upon seeing her husband squirming on the ground with the shards of broken wood and nails around him, Tali charged at the man, pulling her knife out from her thigh strap and hitting him in a non-lethal area on his back. Tali's eyes popped in shock as the body in front of her kept marching forward without even flinching, the knife sticking from his back.

"John? What did you do to this guy?" Tali questioned as she shrank away from the stationary zombie.

He turned slowly around, his skin basically cracking from his face in intricate patterns and designs. The face was scrunched into an angry scowl as it took the few steps toward Tali and picked her up by her throat, beginning to crush her wind pipe, but the façade quickly changed and the grip loosened letting her go. He turned as quickly as he had when it came to face her and took his leave out the door, vanishing with a bright blast of a lightning bolt, cracking across the sky, breaking it like glass.

Shepard rose quickly from the broken pieces of shattered wood and ran to Tali who gasped for air with heavy coughs.

"Bosh'tet!" She managed to yell through her coughs. "Tre'lala elspa'du bosh'tet!"

John raised his eyebrows at his wife as she looked quickly up to him and grabbed her neck to feel that her translator had actually been crushed and in her rage she had yelled at the man in Khelish.

"Sorry… I called him a-" Tali began to explain.

"I know… " Shepard helped her stand. "I think it is best if we just ignore his departure and figure out what exactly is going on…" a chime from his Omni-tool brought his attention down to a message from both Anderson and Hackett regarding this General Aldric.

He sat down and scanned through the messages quickly, his eyes darting through the important sections piecing together the similar information that each message shared, disbelieving of what they were telling him. The Shadow Broker had told him to suspect the General, but he never would have suspected the General of killed in action during The Final Reaper War. He had all the information granted to him, his ship number, crew manifests, doctrines and degrees, pictures of him in his younger days, and the picture of the vessel that he had commanded. He had been one of the surveillance teams patrolling the vast edge of Dark Space. He was deemed the first true casualty when his pompous and heroic action simplex drove him to pursue a vessel into the reaches of the void.

It was only a year after the battle that mining vessel's reporting the remains of an unmarked vessel, one belonging to a General Aldric. The vessel had been crushed and twisted, something that most of the vessels in the war did not share. The conclusion was dereliction of duty causing a strong-headed General to drive his crew into a comet belt. None of the crew's bodies were ever found.

Yet here he was, a ghost, a zombie, or something else, standing in his house showing politeness and humanity before suddenly snapping and showing his broken, animalistic nature. The longer John reviewed the scene in his head the more it appeared that he was being controlled by a Reaper, much like the Harbinger Drones, but it didn't account for the restraint in killing and the intricacies of the designs that broken from his head.

"What's wrong John?" Tali asked her accent sounding thicker without the aid of her translator to smooth things over.

"Our General friend… has been dead since the start of The Final Reaper War…" Shepard stated.

"That would explain his skin breaking apart…" Tali joked as she sat down next to him, pushing, with her feet, the broken glass from a decorative ornament that had been catapulted from the table that John's body had broke. "Hopefully it isn't another Reaper… " She cooed as she cuddled next to her husband looking at the mess leading up to the front door.

"I think it is something else… if he was a Reaper he would have just kept strangling you and this would have quickly gotten out of hand… I'm glad whatever is controlling him stopped…" He kissed his wife on the forehead. "…Now we know to never trust dead Generals that walk into our house." John joked trying to brighten the mood in the house.

"Where's Nadja?" Tali questioned in alarm.

John jumped up and started calling her name, his heart aching with a parental worry. When he saw her poke her head around the corner, the feeling quickly melted like an ice cube falling into a star. She ran toward him and hugged him tightly.

"Is the bad man gone?" Nadja asked, fear still stiffening her voice.

"Yes. The bad man is gone, but he broke a few things when he left." John explained.

"The table and the vase?" Nadja asked, looking at the destruction.

"That… and me and Mom's pride." He teased looking at Tali who grinned at him and shook her head with a small grin on her face; still the same man she had always known.

"Shepard Commander." Stated Legion, bringing John's attention to the side door. "Would you recommend a pursuit of the General?" John also noticed that he was holding his Anti-matter rifle.

"He is already gone… and we might as well not anger that beast anymore. Plus killing an already dead man poses a difficult task." John stated as he walked to a picture on the wall, moving it aside and opening a safe. He pulled out two pistols and tossed one to Tali. "If he does come back… we will be ready. Legion. I need you to turn the house security on for tonight. We don't want any nighttime visits…"

Legion's head panels flared with a series of quick clicks and grind as a million voices discussed, argued, and debated the point before a formed consensus arrived to his neural network; it was the best reasoning considering the circumstances. Legion nodded and opened a side panel on the wall, flicking a series of switches and writing a large stream of numbers and symbols for the password. A faint blue glow filled the doorway that the late General Aldric had left.

"We better get some sleep…" He rested his hand on his daughter's back before rising and shooing them all back to their rooms. When they started to move on their own he stopped and bowed his head in thought, biting his lower lip. "Legion. I need you to stay on the roof and keep an eye out for that man. If he returns, well… use your imagination."

Legion stared at him thoughtfully. "Geth do not ha-"

"I know… " John scratched his head thoughtfully, breathing in before he said the next words. "Shoot him if you have to, go for the head, nothing else seems to affect him from what I can tell." The human looked at the door and scratched the small stubs on his chin, growing ever more paranoid the longer he looked at the outside darkness filled with rain and lightning. He purged the memories from his mind before giving a reassuring tap on Legion's shoulder. Legion stared curiously at him, before the twitching head flaps decided against asking.

* * *

The late General Aldric walked through the pit of night, his eyes barely moving, but his body moving stiffly and awkwardly through the mud and the rain. His men moving beside him, equally showing signs of awkward movement, joined his ranks as he stepped aboard his shuttle and placing the small black cylinder inside of a shielded container that closed upon the presence of the black object.

"We have you now…" came an echoing and broken voice from the cracked lips of the deceased General who watched the container expecting some sort of response, some sort of fighting back, but none came to him. He grunted and started his ascension to the cabin, pieces of his skin beginning to flake off and fall on the ground, disintegrating before ever touching it.

By the time he reached the pilot's seat, his whole right shoulder where the knife had been plunged was exposed, showing an intricate design of moving machinery. The machinery glowed from some inner power source that radiated through the body, apparently mirrored and amplified by the interior of the human suit that new resident had fashioned. The deep designs in the face finally broke the fleshy exterior away and a machine like face appeared underneath, the concentration of the blinding light decreasing as more of the creature was seen.

It punched in the autopilot codes on the shuttle and stared at the rain droplets hitting the front viewport. _Disgusting…_ A flood of light from the back told the strange creature that his brothers cleared their bodies from the wretched dead flesh that they skinned from a vessel traveling into Dark Space. _Too easy…_

The skin-popped and boiled, eventually broke apart and left the body of a creature, gold in color. Large and decorated panels covered its body with large gaps leading to its interior that dimmed down to only a faint glow. It's large red eyes shifted in their almost organic sockets amid the appearance of being a machine. The feet fanned out quickly into three large and armored toes that stuck out to keep balance. The almost built in helmet cascaded and tapered off the front of its head and bending back elegantly the opposite direction. The torso appeared to be constructed from a series of biomechanical muscle fibers with interlacing metal sheets. The majority of their figure was swathed in a golden bronze color that reflected their surroundings in a pulsing degree of reflection as if they could control it. It lifted its hand up to its face and observed the golden-clawed hands. It grunted at the fact that the wretched creatures had been allowed to live.

"Higstrat…" a voice spoke directly into his mind. "I know you wished to kill that family… I could feel it boiling in your system and in your system, but we are serving only as an intelligence mission. We must keep ourselves secret until we strike. Our infiltration teams have already set themselves in places that hold power over the feeble minds of this galaxy. The takeover will be quick, clean, and peaceful… for the most part." The voice explained in a strange language.

"Glav… It was the defenseless and vulnerable Shepard… We could have used this opportunity to set the example now, no loss of men either." Higstrat bellowed mentally to his superior officer.

"All in due time… All in due time…" Glav answered.

The shuttle broke the atmosphere of the dark planet, the lighting that still flashed inside of the clouds shot faint echoes of their power even in the higher altitude orbit of the planet. Higstrat stared at the flashes and grunted again. He didn't want nature. He wanted war.


	12. Chapter 11: Serenity

The sun broke the darkness of the night as it glittered off of the wet landscape like crystals had formed over the surface of all the plants and grasses. Nadja slept in again this day, but considering the night before Shepard was willing to let her sleep while they prepared her surprise for her weekend off of school. He stared out at the convalesced scenery and softly hummed, a tone that he felt matched the tone of the landscape. His eyes softly fell shut as he let his mind explore the deep landscape that Rannoch offered.

His memories were long and deep from the crystalline caverns to the sweeping sprawl of grasslands and gentle breezes. He breathed in what felt like the warm morning air before letting it pass out of him, continuing its journey to planet's surface. The scent of the planet remained as fragrant as a sweet smelling flower pressed against his nose. He breathed in the planet's far-reaching pollen again to see if it would fertilize his dreams; they always did with the lightest of ease.

Tali observed Shepard's meditation in a wondered glory and a strong link of love continued to emanate between the two of them, her eyes unmoving from his serene form. The noise of the house, the now bustling community, and the relaxed sighs of the nearby lake drove the serenity to a farther-reaching influence that one could almost consider the feeling divine. The beginning of the wet seasons maintained its luster for the bringer of life and serenity among the people living on the planet, even if society flourished and grew in all times of the year.

Tali could just make out the soft vibrations of John's low hum. She let her mind join his mind in reliving the planet's scenery in the few years that they had lived on the planet, much still sat in an untouched state. Nostalgia demanded that these areas remain untouched and the quarian people to flourish in harmony with everything with their outlook on the fragile life that they now held. Slowly, the quarian's vocal cords began their own vibration, but it rhythmically lowered and fluctuated in a song for the morning's light.

Their coinciding sounds meshed and together they created a fitting symphony for the rising sun on the glittering landscape. Illium's sunrise, though majestic, was too artificial to hold the beauty of a natural world of openness and acceptance among all the people. Tali smiled and, without a sound, rose and gently walked to Shepard's side, her hand sliding across one shoulder to the other. It broke his trance, but he came face to face with what his dream was showing him, a reality of thought standing before him, the happiness sitting next to him, her hand on his shoulder, her head on nested in his neck, staring at the same painted picture.

"Another year… Another glorious year with you and her… our daughter." Shepard spoke softly holding Tali close as they let their bodies and minds absorb into the scenery.

"We even hit a few snags, but… I never believed we would be able to live normal lives with a normal family." She moved her head slowly, her nose tickling the side of Shepard's neck as she softly planted two moist lips against his neck, a small noise breaking the silence of her lips breaking from his skin.

The feelings washed over their bodies as a relaxing sunrise showered the sparing clouds with a painted orange and purple abstraction. The only noise in the early morning light was only the small noises of the couple moving, their robes softly rubbing past each other as they moved to a comfortable position. Tali's breath softly broke the silence for only a second as her eyes softly fell into a dreamy state.

John reached his hand around his wife's thin waist, his fingers resting on her stomach, his fingers softly playing on her stomach in soft sweeping motions. Tali massaged Shepard's stomach in retaliation to his slightly ticklish touch on her sides. She softly bent her fingers at his sides and poked his tender edges causing him to jerk slightly. He laughed and looked down at her as he held her tighter to him holding her close.

At first it just felt like a loving embrace, but her beliefs burned quickly away as she felt his fingers dug into her sides. She squealed as her body lurched from the tender areas being poked by Shepard's precise fingers.

"John! Stop it!" She squealed through her laugher.

Her husband fell on her, keeping her in place with his weight giving both his hands the freedom to shower his wife and ticklish pokes and rubs.

"Shepard! No!" She laughed, still stuck on her side, her legs curling up to her body as her muscles tensed to the impulses in her body. She giggled and laughed as she squirmed under him, trying to fight back his assault. She finally picked him up just enough to turn on her back and look up into Shepard's eyes. The gaze broke the momentum of the assault as the silence returned to the soft painted scenery. Shepard leaned down and they kissed.

A smirk broke through Tali's lips as she kissed him, it sticking as they broke their connection, coming face to face with each other. "Bosh'tet…" She spoke lovingly.

"Yeah…" He spoke softly as he kissed her again causing her to skip around again and a stronger smile to spread across her face.

"You think you can just-" Tali softly muttered as she wrapped her arms around the back of his head, but her words were quickly muffled by another kiss that was a bit longer than the last two. "-do that to me and think that your-" Another kiss broke her again. "…kisses…" The word lost itself in her mind as she leaned up and joined their lips together in a stronger embrace.

The last kiss lasted the longest as Tali kept her lips against his, holding his head down to her mouth and softly rubbing his side with her leg. Both of her legs rose on each side of John before she suddenly pushed him back turning the tied to the war. Tali sat on him, his hands pinned under her knees, he struggled against her, but quickly felt her fingers poke and prod his sides. He jerked as he tried to resist laughing and escape her hold, but she held him firmly in place as she tickled him. He finally broke and laughed; Tali's victory was achieved. She leaned down and kissed him.

"Bosh'tet…" Shepard whispered into her ear.

"You and me both…" Tali whispered back.

"Perfect…"

"Perfect." Tali agreed, pressing her forehead against Shepard's and just let the peace and quiet return to the surrounding house.

The time quickly dissolved into an abstract thought as they shared each other's warmth and pressure. Tali rested her weight completely down on John's body, sliding down far enough to put her head on his chest and rest. It quickly melted any tension that was left over and she could feel the weight of her eyelids growing the longer she felt his chest rise and fall.

Meanwhile, Shepard could feel Tali's weight in his body in a relaxed state. Her body beat any blanket or pillow anywhere in the galaxy and he smiled at the feeling. He could feel himself drifting off more he felt her breathing. John softly ran his fingertips through her hair and along the side of her face. She smiled at his touch and hugged him tighter.

* * *

Higstrat clicked his metallic fingertips against the side of his head as his fiery eyes flashed around the cabin. He had quickly fallen into deep thought about Glav's orders to keep Shepard alive considering the power that he had shown of organizing a whole galaxy to battle oppressive rule drove his thoughts into a vortex of darkness and mutiny.

"Glav… Glav…" He repeated to himself. The name fueling an inner rage that brought the glowing cracks on his body to a bright illumination of golden red light.

He slammed his fists on the defenseless computer casing in front of him, bringing it to a crushed and bent scrap piece of metal. One of the foot soldiers walked into the room.

"Something wrong sir?" The soldier questioned.

In a flash of bluish haze Higstrat was standing and looking into the gold eyes of his lowly support guard. He could just see the loyalty to Glav in those eyes. The gears along his sides clicked and flicked as an organic and mental trigger turned the motions of his physical body. He grabbed the soldier's head and easily lifted him off of the ground and slammed him against the wall.

"If something was wrong… I would have called for you!" He threw the soldier toward the wall where he crashed and crumpled to the floor. He rose quickly and stared at Higstrat.

He only stared; the look in the energy pulsing through the eye sockets telling the story of disgust at Higstrat's outbursts and violent nature, but being a larger build with a greater power output, the soldier turned his attention away and left the room without another word.

Higstrat watched the pitiful excuse for a soldier leave before he strode back to his chair, his metallic feet clicking and switching to another style and formation to better suit his casual walking. Steam broke the edges of his arms and legs and the red hue in the golden illumination fade. He sat back down in the chair and fell onto his chair and clicking his fingers along his head again. The organic nerve centers along his body picked up the senses of his touch. He enjoyed the new feelings from his new upgrades of assimilated flesh.

A muffled crying came from the side room of the cockpit. He stared at it, as his fingers stopped strumming. He walked to the door and grabbed the edges and hesitated only briefly. He opened the door slowly and a human female jumped out at him beating her hands off of his metallic outer casing.

He gripped his hand around her tender and frail neck and lifted her off of the ground. She coughed and struggled to breath. She kicked and held the large metal claw around her neck as her red eyes filled with what tears she had left.

"Shh… I'm not going to kill you… You are safe with me…" Higstrat whispered in her ear.

He softly lowered her to the ground and let go of her neck. Her knees wobbled for a bit before she collapsed to the ground. She gripped her red neck and struggled to breathe as she looked at floor and the golden metallic feet of her captive.

"We only needed a ship and yours… was convenient. Though I am given a bit of dilemma… for you see… We don't want to be known yet and well… you know… so…" Higstrat spoke softly.

The woman snapped her head up to the large metallic figure in front of her, her lip quivering as another flood of tears filled her eyes. She made a few noises before she gathered her voice and spoke to her kidnappers.

"P-p-p-please… Don't kill me… please…" She stammered and cried.

Higstrat stooped down to her level and looked at the organic creature crying in front of him. He slid a sharp finger under her chin and lifted her head up so that she would make eye contact with him.

"Like I said… I have no intention of killing you… But I can't have you telling people we exist…" Higstrat spoke softly.

"I won't tell anyone. I won't. I won't say a word. Not a word to anyone. I promise." She shook her head as a flood of hope filled her eyes.

"I believe you…" He rested his hands on both of her shoulders and kept the eye contact. "…but my orders were clear…"

The hope in her eyes quickly burned out of her eyes as Higstrat's thumbs pressed against her throat and he listed her up against the wall. She flailed again, but she wasn't being choked as hard before. Instead she stared at the head plate on Higstrat begin to open and a flood of light flash from it, her body quickly falling limp as she stared into the light. The last thing to fall were her hands until she was only being held up by her neck.

Higstrat gently put her down on the ground as his head closed back up. The woman's eyes were still wide open, and she breathed slowly, but she remained completely still. He walked out of the cockpit and joined his bodyguards at the airlock. A small hiss later and they vanished from the ship.

Three hours later a small form began to move aboard the ship. A young woman rose from the floor holding onto her head.

"Bloody hell…" She stared at the sensors and found a blinking red light claiming a computer error caused by a solar disturbance. She opened her medical Omni-tool and found that her body had hit a spike in energy causing her to black out and fall to the floor. She rubbed her head and considered that she had only passed out considering the data that her Omni-tool spoke of. She checked the ship controls and realigned the ship's autopilot to return to Rannoch. She knew she was already dreadfully late.


	13. Chapter 12: Intent and Love

Just a glimmer could be seen of three floating specks that were set in the vacuum of space like suspended bubbles in a gelatin. They floated without care or worry as if there was no worry and that their mission would run smoothly without a hitch like always. Such was the way of The Chosen and they valued their efficiency. They were a ruthless and uncaring race, but they weren't completely heartless. They normally tried to prevent taking lives, but they only saw this as a waste of resources and productivity. Everything was a machine to them and they liked it to be well oiled and cooperative. At least that is what the Hierarchy demanded. A dark shape advanced on the specks and they vanished as it passed.

Higstrat briskly walked up the staircase and around the corner to a room filled with cognitive drones. Higstrat lowered his head as he passed the non-stop working drones. If there was a punishment that he did not wish to have, it would to not be dismantled and reintegrated as one of those insufferable machines. Once made into a cognitive drone, movement ceases and the self is wiped from their core beliefs and instead an intelligence core is installed. Higstrat had been friends with a few of the Cognitives, as he called them, before they had been disfigured. He considered them dead now, just working the computer banks and data processing banks without end or break. He gripped the cylinder in his hand and opened the door at the end of the hall.

The office was simple and small with a single calculating Chosen standing at computer display of their next target, a rather small galaxy that had many names to those that lived in it. They had only chosen to call it M9-W1.

"How goes the infiltration teams… have they all been planted…?" creaked the captain.

Higstrat stood taller in front of his captain's smaller stature, but nothing could counter the sophistication of her design and plating, a series of rotating sections surrounded and protected her core. Her eyes focused on her next in command, proud and leery of his intents; he was always difficult to read.

"Did you clean your trail? We don't want to draw any suspicions… The Hierarch would not be pleased if we met any unwanted… resistance." She spoke, clicking her metallic fingers on the command deck in front of her.

"The human's memory has no remembrance of the events that took her and held her captive, Higher." Higstrat explained to her.

Captain Higher nodded to herself though she seemed slightly put off by his keeping of the human's life instead of creating an accident for the ship to silence them permanently. A few gears clicked in her torso as she thought about what she wanted to say, Higstrat heard the effort and wanted to grin at her trouble in reading him.

"Next time wipe the slate clean and make it an accident. We don't know how long your technique of 'making' the captives forget that they have seen us will last and I want certainty… but I can't argue with your results and that you have located this Commander John Shepard that the Hierarch wishes to wipe from this… M9-W1." Higher answered.

"Yes Higher… as you wish… I have also brought forth a present of which my reports spoke of." Higstrat spoke smugly.

Higher's attitude perked up and she walked toward Higstrat. "You mean… You found the Seer?"

He bowed low and pulled the black cylinder from one of his compartments and held it out to her. She stared at it in surprise, the gears audibly clicking from the surprise, her metal claws extended and opened and grasped the slender object. It clicked in her hands as she softly spun it around and scanned the surface carefully. She grabbed both sides of it and broke it open, a dark cloud rising out of it and materializing in front of her.

"We finally meet… it sure took you long enough…" The Shadow Broker spoke condescendingly.

"You don't seem to be in the position to talk down to your new master's, Seer." Higher spoke.

"I never knew that I had any previous masters nor do I think you are in any position to be so rude to your 'exalted' guest… though I do enjoy Seer… it has a nice ring to it though it will be irrelevant in the time to come." It joked.

"Why don't you drop your hood so we can see what you really are…?" Higher commanded.

A small chuckle broke the silence as it raised its hands up to the edges of the hood and pushed the hood back revealing a black and red environmental suit covered in intricate designs. The facemask was red and two eyes looked back at them, glowing softly behind the visor. The voice drifted from its deep sound to that of a young girl, around twenty in age. She laughed as the cloak melted behind her and sucked back into her legs, causing the blurry legs to clear up and solidify.

"Higher is it? Yes… of course you would be wouldn't you…?" Broker continued smugly. "What makes you believe you have the upper hand right now?" She smiled.

"I did not expect that the Seer was of the race quarian." Higher spoke.

"I am not. I have taken the view of my new form, but I am only a projection of it. You may have me, but I am simply a shell of the thing that I was. I have already passed myself for safe keeping, as I had passed myself into this holding container, but my plan runs deeper than that. I am planning to recreate myself… hidden from your plans and buried within time and space until the right time comes. Your plans will succeed… this galaxy will be placed under the rule of the Hierarch, but a power struggle is on my mind. A power struggle to teeter the tower of rule and collapse the rule over not just this galaxy… but every galaxy under the Chosen Celestials." She continued mockingly.

"How dare you talk to me like that?" She swung her arm, her fingers glowing a bright red before it swiped harmlessly through the form in front of her.

"But I need more time… Time is too precious right now." The Broker smirked.

Higstrat backed up slowly and quietly sealed his core from the connection of the Cognitives. He walked out into their hallway of computers and saw them slowly look at him. They softly reached over to bypass his seal.

Higher softly backed away from the now pulsing figure in front of her that chuckled in her face. The air in the ship began to whip and crack as black lightning arched from the translucent form. She raised her arms just as a gust ripped through the ship, but no significant damage was done except everything froze in space and time, a temporal lock. Higstrat saw the blast of electrical energy come toward him and he felt it pass through him, a cold and dead feeling taking him, but as fast as he felt it, it was gone. Life returned to him.

Everything had stopped around him and when he checked the reports of the other ships, he found that all of their operational ships that maintained a direct link to this capital ship had been frozen in a time seal. His gears turned in thought as he realized he was the only one on the ship still moving. He pounded his core shield and found a stream of information still pouring in from the operatives who were actively in their camouflage and their suits, their main rule was to stay off of the grid forcing them to maintain slower communication, but protected and sealed off cores from the rest of the command in the galaxy.

Higstrat dented the casing of computer before he walked to the air lock and jettisoned himself from the ship, jumping toward the planet that he had just left not moments ago. Rannoch… Time Remaining: 11 years 15 days 35 minutes 12 seconds. Set.

* * *

Nadja slept well in her warm bed; her mind wandered off as her mind switched dreams. She found herself staring at a group of strange creatures as a strange black cloud spun around her. She felt slightly confused, but for some reason she felt like she knew what she was doing. She felt her mouth begin to move and her vocal cords begin to vibrate as she spoke to the strange creatures.

Her confusion quickly faded as she felt her confidence rise and she watched her body talk to the creatures. She fought back slightly when she started hearing the creatures referring to her as the Seer. For some reason she enjoyed the idea thinking it was some high praise or something like that causing her to smile and she even felt her physical smile crack and she wondered if she could speak now.

"I do enjoy Seer… it has a nice ring to it." She wanted to stop there, but her body continued, saying words that she didn't know what they meant.

She sank back into the shadow of this strange bodies mind and watched out of it at the strange creatures. Slowly she felt like she was running out of time and she began to panic. Her eyes quickly flashed to the side at a large one of the creatures. It stared at her like it knew something before it began to back off from her and leave the room. She looked down and saw that she was glowing with energy and before she could react to anything, everything froze in time around her, but she still heard something behind her, but she couldn't move. She was cold, afraid, and alone.

She quickly jumped up from her bed with her heart racing. The nightmares, if she could call them that were getting slightly worse and felt real beyond any other dream that she had ever had before. She looked around her room and saw that it was almost noon. She jumped from her bed and ran over to her closet and grabbed her nicest robes and disrobed and turned to the mirror. She stopped and stared at her nude form. It felt different and wrong like this wasn't her body. She looked at her child-like form and at her chest and hips. Something felt seriously wrong with what she saw, but as soon as the feeling that had made her look at areas of her body she never had thought of noticing before, it vanished.

She slid her robes on her body and left the room, slowly and looking around at the dark hallway, her mind filled with a million thoughts, a million questions and no answers to fill them. She rounded the corner and saw her parents cuddling in the view window of the living room. Something dragged at her heart for only a second and then she walked toward them, silently.

They were kissing each other more so than they did in the morning in the kitchen when she ate her breakfast. She had walked in on her parents when they were kissing more than this and when they seemed to be doing more. They didn't seem angry when they saw her and just stopped whatever they were doing and took her back to bed. She remembered that they told her that she would understand later in her life; she found herself not caring enough and had gone to sleep without a further thought. _Adults… you can never get what they are doing…_

"Mom… Dad…" She broke the silence of the situation.

The two forms in front of her didn't flinch and only slow broke from their kiss before turning to their daughter. Tali sat on Shepard and pressed her hands against the floor, rising to her feet and smoothening her robes out.

"Ready for some breakfast?" Tali asked her leaning her body to the kitchen.

John rose too and joined his wife wrapping his arms around her waist and staring at his child over her shoulder. Her hands softly rose from her sides and gripped his strong and worn hands, feeling them touch her soul and combine themselves together in an invisible feeling of romance, which Tali always found to cause her heart to flutter. She ran her fingers over his hand before gripping them tightly, finishing the seal.

Nadja watched their routine and something warm built inside of her. She felt herself understand every gentle touch that their parent's gave to each other on a daily basis. Her memory quickly flashed every look, glance, smirk and smile, every wink, blink, and romantic link, shown and seen. She understood the concept of love like she had never before felt before; it scared her; it comforted her; a paradox of feelings that resulted in the only thing that she could muster to say that expressed every feeling in her.

"I'm hungry." She smiled.

"Hmm… I'm sure we can try a bit of quarian pizzazz and cook up something spectacular for breakfast." Tali giggled before leaning back and kissing John on the lips before walking to the kitchen.

The young quarian followed her mother with her eyes seeing how she looked at the ground as she walked, her eyes not seeing the house but the memories that were playing within. Her cheeks flushed slightly and she smiled. Nadja had never noticed or understood such gentle motions of the muscles in the face. She watched her mother's eyes spark back on as she turned, the smile spreading more as her mouth opened slightly as her eyes glowed softly. After she stared back at Shepard her walking changed and her hips swayed more.

Nadja's attention fell back on her father who had already buried his face in his palm as he smiled, the shimmer in his eyes were soothing and priceless, but more so she felt a pang as to what exactly made him feel that way. She turned back to her mother and watched her hips move like her dad was doing. Her face burned as she felt the time resume its normal pace and her newest thoughts fled from her mind before she could register them.

"Nadja… Have you seen a more amazing sight?" She turned back to see her father looking out of the viewing deck out at the rolling hills. She walked to his side and felt small compared to her father. She stared up at him, the sun softly lighting his face from the window, the soft glow warmed her mind and her heart as she looked out the viewport at the shimmering grasses.

"It's beautiful…" Nadja said unaware that a stray tear ran down her cheek and fell to the floor. No one caught it and no one ever did.

"We better help your mother in the kitchen…" He leaned in close to her. "You know how your mother is with cooking right?" He teased.

Her mother's voice rang from the kitchen. "I heard that John!"

Shepard flashed her a look of exaggerated surprise. "Your mother has got quite the sense of hearing… and humor."

"I have a shotgun!" She yelled playfully back at them.

"Yes dear! We are coming to help you." He looked down and patted Nadja on the head, messing up her hair. "Come on kiddo. Duty Calls."

They walked into the kitchen and found a series of ingredients already being combined. The smell was fantastic, but the other consumers were forced to sit and wait. Nadja swung her legs back and forth in the chair, humming different songs while Shepard leaned on the table, opening and checking a wide range of different databases. He finished quickly and rose to help Nadja's mother, but she turned quickly and pointed the spoon at him.

"Sit. I want to make this myself." She commanded.

Raising his hands in defense he fell back to the safety of his chair and, almost like a child, he fell onto the table and buried his head in his arms and grumbled to her. She turned and stared at him, shaking her head slowly, the toothy smile returned.

It wasn't long before the last parts to the breakfast dishes were done and in even less time the plates and bowls were cleaned. Nadja rose and ran to her room and put on her play shoes and another layer of robes. She walked outside and saw to her delight that the soccer game was only just beginning to choose teams.

"Have fun Nadja!" Her parents yelled in unison to her.

"Thanks Vanum!" She yelled to her parents, exploiting a quarian word for parents.

She ran down to the field and saw that only a few children remained to be chosen and she quickly joined the group to be picked. A small bump on her side caused her to turn and she saw her good friend Nesya'Liron. Her name was called and she walked to the left, Nadja walked right and smiled at her friend. She wished she was on the same team as Nesya, but she felt excited about being able to beat her. She grinned more when she was chosen to guard her on the right outside midfielder. They lined up and readied themselves.

"You are looking gorgeous today Nesya." Nadja complimented.

"You look pretty good too Nadja. Is that a new robe?" She asked.

"No I-" the game started.

Nadja tore up the side of the field, Nesya stayed close to her, guarding and trying to hold her back from getting a good angle, but she broke her guard as received a fly ball into the corner. She chipped the ball into the air; lobbing it right into the center of the box as she watched her team head it toward the goal, but the swift hands of the goalie snagged it. Nadja grunted.

"You are getting good." Nesya complimented.

"Thank you Nesya."

Nadja's memory flashed only briefly back to how her mother had smiled as she walked away from her father and then it was gone. It made her slightly uncomfortable, but she quickly and easily shook it off and focused on guarding her mark.

The game was sealed at a zero-zero game in the last half of the match. Most of the players were wet with sweat, but everyone was smiling and a few were laughing. They splashed water on their faces and sighed out as she felt the cooling liquid pull the heat from her body and cool her body down. She pivoted around and scanned the group of kids and found Nesya near the back,

She pushed her way through the crowd and was about to gain her attention when she saw her lift her water container above her head and pour some of the water down the back of her head. She found herself following the water droplets fall from her hair and down her back. Through the cracks of the robes she managed to follow it down to her waist where her vision stopped. Something about her rear end got her thinking.

She suddenly felt like she was in her father's shoes, walking up behind her mother and softly reaching his hands around her waist and holding her close. That companionship, that love, she wanted it and wished she had it. She felt something move in her arms and her senses returned to her. She found herself relaxing her chin on Nesya's shoulder as her hands were wrapped around her waist romantically. Nesya's hand had grabbed her hands but it was a playful means of getting the hold off of her.

Nadja let go quickly feeling embarrassed and ashamed, but she was able to pass it off as a joke for the most part. Nesya stared at her and laughed showing her that it had come off as just a joke and Nadja went with it.

"What is going on…" Nadja asked herself as she watched Nesya's waist move as she walked to her side of the field.


	14. Chapter 13: Shock Therapy

A/N I might as well warn all the readers now that certain events happen in this section that may be viewed as unfavorable or too risque for your tastes in the story. Such events will not happen again in the story until it is a bit more appropriate, of which, you will understand. Enjoy and leave a review so I can gauge where I am at in interest. Thank you. HG

* * *

The game ended after the second half with most of the players covered in dirt and stains from the local grasses that were on the field. Nadja breathed slowly as she walked to the edge of the field listening to her team cheer for their victory. It had been close and she had found that she had scored the winning goal of the game, but had slinked away from the celebration; she needed time to think about what was going on with her and Nesya.

"Nadja!" the voice behind her made her jump and she almost dropped her water bottle and turned to see Nesya smiling at her, the sweat on her skin sparkling brilliantly, the flicker of her eyes, that shimmer.

Her eyes wanted to flee her face. Something was wrong and she couldn't place her finger on it, but she wanted to, no, needed to look somewhere else, away from her eyes. Her brain kept telling her that she was embarrassing herself and that she needed to say something witty or something supportive of their lost, but she couldn't think of everything resulting in her eyes staring at a piece of grass standing at Nesya's feet. She took a deep breath and looked up and managed to get the formalities out of her system.

"Nesya. Good game." Nadja stated feeling her face burn at each word, but she managed to lock eyes with her again.

"Nice moves out there Nadja! I have never seen you move like that before it was… beautiful." She smiled.

Nadja's face burned as her eyes widened slightly. She knew that her words were innocent and didn't hold the tense that she felt that she needed to hear to completely melt in her arms, but the point that she found the most frustrating was that from what she had seen among all of the quarians and every one of her friend's parents were male and the other female and she felt a strong attraction to another female. Was it just a close friendship? Was it normal? Was it okay?

Her hands came together and she nervously rang them together and tried to steady her heart. "Well you moved beautifully too." She couldn't believe those words escaped her mouth. The rest of the air was sucked from her body and her arms quickly squeezed each other and she tried to breath more.

"Is something wrong?" Nesya asked, her eyes flashing concern as she stepped forward.

"No. No… nothing is wrong. I'm fine… I'm just… I don't know. I think I like you…" Nadja felt the words leaving her mouth and wished she would just shut up.

"What…?" Nesya asked; she didn't move from where she was standing.

Nadja could feel the tension growing between her and Nesya and she found herself staring into her eyes. She could see how unsure she was along with the reflection of herself in Nesya's eyes. She began to lose herself and softly felt herself start leaning forward, her senses completely melting as her eyes began to close and her head turned slightly. She slowly became aware of Nesya's hot breath against her lips and could have sworn she was about to faint when a whistle broke her out of the trance.

She pushed Nesya back by her shoulders and saw that she still showed no repulsion, no defense against her. She had almost kissed another girl and she didn't even know why, yet this girl had almost let her do it and probably would have let her finish what she was about to do. Her hands rubbed together as she left quickly.

Her friends tried to talk to her as she passed, but she didn't speak to them. They watched her leave in a hurry before turning to where she had come from and saw Nesya staring at her with worried eyes, her face red and her hands sliding past each other.

"What happened Nesya? What did you tell her?" One of the players asked her.

"I…" She had no words to say. She didn't know what she was feeling about the whole mess that had just befallen her. She could still feel her lips quiver just as she felt the heat from Nadja's mouth almost touch hers as she panicked and didn't know what to do. She had frozen up and was enjoying what was going on, but she didn't know what exactly that was. "I don't know…"

"Well you better check on her… She seems a little warped about something." Her friends told her.

"Yeah… yeah… I think I should check on her…" She said biting her lip softly at the end before turning quickly and grabbing her things and walking up the hill after Nadja who had just crested the hill.

Nadja walked hastily; she needed a place to cool off and collect her feelings or whatever had happened back there. She replayed her memories slowly trying to figure out what kind of joke she was trying to pull on her best friend, but something was off.

"Bosh'tet!" She stomped her foot as she walked, throwing her arms down to her sides. "Bosh'tet, bosh'tet, bosh'tet!" She cursed to herself. She buried her face into her hands as she felt the grass touch her legs. She imaged that each blade that swept passed was Nesya's hand. "No!" She yelled at herself driving the thoughts from her head.

She walked down to the safer side of the coast where a small beach sat in a small cove that was her own secret spot. She slid through the bushes and walked onto the gentle sand, taking her shoes at the edge of the sand and walked barefoot out on the warm sand. Listening to the waves and letting herself forget her feelings. She breathed slowly and looked at the waves and relaxed. She sat down on the sand and just relaxed. With the soothing sound of the water, she fell back on her back.

Nesya poked her head from the bushes and saw Nadja lying in the sand on the beach and wondered if she should just walk out there and talk to her about what happened, but she had no idea what to say. Her eyes turned back to the slope took a step toward it to leave, but something tugged her to go back and check on her. She sighed and straightened her robes and slid her shoes off, placing them next to Nadja's.

She quietly walked out onto the sand and found that it felt amazing against her feet. Every step was like some soothing solid that moved like a liquid under her feet and the filling sound of the crashing was enough to put her mind at ease and tell her that this was the best decision, but she quickly began to doubt herself the closer she got.

"Nadja…?" She called out weakly the closer she walked, but she didn't receive a response. "Nadja?"

Nadja heard that voice again and had hoped it was in the wind, but when she opened her eyes she saw Nesya standing over her. Her heart wanted to jump from her chest but the lump in her throat stopped it.

"I just wanted to talk to you…" She brushed her hair to the side and coughed slightly, trying to find words.

The young quarian Shepard moved to a seated position, Nesya sat in front of her. "Okay… What do you want to know?" She asked.

"Back there… we were… I… I think we or you were about to kiss me?" She asked.

Nadja swallowed the lump in her throat and started to speak her mind. "Nesya. To be completely clear, I have no idea what was happening back there and I wish I knew what was going, but I really don't. I just started feeling strange things about you and then something just started to push me forwards and I… almost made an accident and embarrassed you." She stammered off.

"You said you liked me. You don't mean that you…?" She started to ask.

"I think I don't just like you… but like-like you. I love you…" Her heart punched her in the throat.

Nesya stared at her and swallowed hard, but she didn't leave. Her eyes were wide from the words that Nadja was saying and Nadja felt that she was the same way. Why was she saying this? Why? Why? Nadja's thought screamed at her and it must have shown because she felt Nesya take her hands. Her heartbeat silenced her mind and she looked up at Nesya. It wasn't the loving glance she expected, but a concerned and understanding glance. Nadja's mind felt a stronger love for her and she wished she didn't. She just wanted all of these feelings to leave her, but instead she leaned forward again. To her surprise she found that Nesya was also leaning toward her.

Their speed slowed as their lips neared each other like the repulsion of magnets. A sharp hiss in Nadja's mind turned her to the side and she just hugged Nesya. The tension in her ears quickly vanished. She breathed hard at the awkwardness and was glad that she saved herself from doing something regrettable.

"We can't do this. This isn't what I think it is… or whatever is in my head right now." Her mind calmed at the truth to her words.

"Nesya's face was still burned a dark red and her eyes were watering slightly from the amount of tension between the two of them.

"I… I… I don't even know what we were even doing." Nesya admitted. "You seemed like you knew what you were doing."

"I wasn't doing that on my own…" Nadja reasoned.

"What do you mean? Is someone watching us? Is this some sort of joke?" Nesya questioned looking around the sides of the cliffs across the rocky faces and the softly sighing of the bushes in the sea breeze that the ocean had exhaled onto the side of the coast.

"No. I mean. I don't know. This is all confusing. I don't know what we were doing just then…" Nadja explained running her hands through her hair and looking at the ground.

An awkward silence stemmed between the two and Nesya just breathed out quickly and turned and walked away quickly. Nadja watched her and regretted what had happened. She felt like she ruined a relationship, a relationship that she knew nothing of and that her body wanted to pursue. She wanted to listen and give into it, but it felt wrong and dirty. She felt feelings like she never had before. She could feel parts of her body that she had never felt before and she hated it. It scared her. It flashed into her like a scary dream, a flash of a nightmare taking hold of her. She felt hot and on fire. Her clothes squelched her skin and she couldn't stand it.

She turned toward the waves, tears falling from her eyes as she walked toward the water, letting the robes fall from her. She was aware of her desires when she started to walk, but the closer she got the more she felt like she was leaving her body. Her legs only walked toward the crashing waves and she didn't understand it.

Nadja stopped right as the water touched her toes. A sense of freedom took her and her body jolted slightly as a black mist broke from her skin and her body limply fell backward into the sand, eyes open, but the lights in her eyes were dull and lifeless, she never saw that. She continued to stare out at the water and floated more than she felt her feet step. She made it out onto water when she turned around and saw her form lying on the ground.

A spike of panic stabbed into her heart as she ran back to her body and grabbed her own face, her vision suddenly being swept into a tunnel vortex as the air was ripped from her lungs and new form of air filled what felt like new lungs. She jumped back up and felt the water on the side of her feet, the sand on her skin, and the coolness of the breezy air on her skin.

It felt like her lungs were about to snap from all the strain. "What's going on…? What's going on!" She screamed at herself.

Her arms dropped as another presence took her. A deep-seated anger took her and she rose up to her feet and marched straight back to her robes and picked them up. A quick fold was tossed on them as she stared around angrily.

"They think they can control me… abuse me… They can't do this to me… They have no right… No right! They judge and judge and judge, but they don't understand what I am trying to accomplish!" Nadja heard herself say. It frightened her.

"Why are you saying this…?" She asked out loud to herself.

No one responded. Her vision changed back to a softer outlook and her hand unclenched from her robes. She slowly turned them around and put them back on. Nothing seemed to be making sense to her. Every feeling, every emotion was living its own life inside of her. Her knees shook and she fell to her knees. Nothing existed anymore. The boundaries of the universe were nonexistent. All of the reason and logic, a whole retelling of all of the universes history, culture, art and science, understanding of everything began to fill her mind.

Her eyelids pulsed and shook as she saw everything in the universe, the war, the death, the disease, every immoral act, war and genocide. The grief was overwhelming her senses and she felt the world around her begin to blacken, but the history changed. A face appeared through the darkness; a face she had seen countless times before.

"Dad…?" She asked the figure in her mind.

Images of her dad began to flare and echo through her senses. Every image of his successes the people he saved. She watched the people cheer for her father when he took the stand. He watched him fight for the sake of different species that owed him nothing. Someone watched him most of his life, watching him at every important event in his life. She relived the events through the eyes of some observer to the events. She saw the alleyway with a young quarian being saved by a man. His voice was unmistakable as being her father's. The woman, however, was at a loss her in mind. Her voice sounded familiar, but it sounded too young to be her until her name was spoken aloud.

"Mom…?" She asked out loud. She watched the progression of their relationship from that of a crewmate to a close friend, her mother's nervous hand rubbing always in the background as she watched him leave the room, her eyes watching him longingly.

It wasn't long before she saw the destruction of the Normandy and her father die in space. The observer looked after Tali for a short time, skipping vast amounts of time until she found herself standing in the corner of a room, her mother wearing her more familiar garments. A reunion most fitting, a love story that brought a smile to her face.

Before long she found herself just seeing her mother jump onto her father passionately kissing him, the vision turned away at an appropriate moment. The rest of their lives read like a book to her before it vanished and formed into her own memories. She fell back, blacking out instantly.

The sighing waves greeted her ears as she cracked her eyes to the red sky of the sunset. She looked around with only her eyes and saw only the sky and a higher rock wall. She turned her head to the side and saw the sand of the cove; small dunes and dents followed the path out to sea, but curved back to the trail out. She sat up slowly, light headed and dizzy, along with a squirming stomach that wanted to release instantly, but she only heaved dryly.

"Where am I…?" She asked aloud to herself.

She looked around and stood to her shaky legs and tried to walk to her shoes, but she stumbled as the spongy feel and depression of the sand knocked her off balance. The confused quarian crawled on her hands and knees over to the pair of shoes lying at the foot of the bush.

"Why am I not playing soccer…? I could have sworn I came out here to play soccer… not fall asleep on the beach." She laughed. "I getting too old for this…" She stole one of her dad's lines and laughed at her own joke.

She hummed the song that she remembered from when she was just a baby, taking her time to climb the steep slope of the embankment and try to get home without falling asleep again. Maybe even get inside right when her parents would have supper just prepared for her to enjoy. Her stomach growled with delight from the thought of steaming meat covered in spices with a side of Scea Berries and greens.


	15. Chapter 14: Family

As Nadja approached the beautiful white hill on the hilltop she could see the lights shimmer through the windows just as the light began to vanish quickly, the star falling beneath the horizon and going to bed for the night. She lifted her head into the air and took a deep breath of the air and she could make out the smells of the dry rubs that were normally placed on the meats that were to be baked. Her mouth watered and her stomach squealed at her with happiness.

She dropped her dirty shoes just inside the door and walked to the kitchen where the sensational aroma was clearly originating. Out of the corner of her mouth, her tongue poked through and wetted her lips as she rounded the corner and saw her parents sitting at the kitchen table. Shepard's eyes perked up and a passing of relief smeared across his face as he stood up and walked to her.

"Nadja… we were worried about where you had disappeared to; you know not to wonder off like that without telling anyone…" He spoke to her.

Tali was the next to come over and hug her tightly, we weren't as worried as your father is trying to make it. Your friend Nesya stopped by and said that you were at your secret little cove. She did seem a bit embarrassed to tell us that. If you are going down there could you please tell your father or me. I still don't trust that place…" She consoled.

"Yes mom…" She spoke slightly annoyed.

Tali smiled and nodded as she turned back to the roast and drizzled another ladle of broth onto the top. "You're lucky little one… If you had my father you would have not eaten…" She spoke with a small smirk on her face.

"When can I see grandpa?" Nadja asked, taking a seat at the table.

Tali stopped and tensed slightly at her words. In Nadja's seven years of growing up with them, she had never asked about Rael. Her resolve had been pretty strong all of the years, but when hearing the innocent question being asked by her young daughter hit a nerve that she never thought existed in her anymore. Out of a stroke of luck and shear will power she turned to her daughter with a strong appearance.

"Nadja… Grandpa passed away a long time ago… He sacrificed his life to try and get me a home here on our home world. He was the one who built this house for us." She explained, her voice tapering into a quiver toward the end of her explanation.

Shepard softly lowered his mug of steaming coffee-like liquid that he had been sipping on slowly before the question had been brought up. Nadja stared at her mother and understood what she was saying, but worse was that something in her had noticed the slight muscle movements on her face and the muscles around her eyes had drooped at the mention and had progressively fallen through her description. She also took note of the shimmering of her eyes softly increasing as her tear ducts had began to release. Time slowed and she began to notice a million details about her face along with answer to what those details were pointing toward. She had to take a deep breath as she felt a sudden wave of depression hit her and a wall of regret for asking the question broke her innocence.

She lowered her head slowly, her eyes darting back and forth at what she was seeing before she knew the correct answer and raised her head again.

"Sorry mom… I didn't mean to bring that up… I didn't know." Nadja answered.

Tali was partially taken aback at Nadja's maturity in the matter, causing a smile to spread across her face, all of which Nadja's mind took note of with the utmost precision; it began to hurt her head and she just wanted it to stop, which to surprise it instantly stopped.

"It's okay Nadja… you just didn't know… I just didn't know if you were ready to know what had happened to him. He wasn't always there for me… but I knew he loved me… I just looked too much like mother… how I talked, my strength… wringing my hands. He loved me as much as he couldn't handle the memories that I gave him." Tali seemed relieved for finally getting those ideas off of her chest, just speaking them openly for everyone to know and hear. It was a fact that she hadn't even brought up to Shepard before.

His reaction was calm and collected, giving her a nod of understanding and a smile seeing that she felt much better about finally telling everyone the issues she had with her father.

"Now… let's eat!" She said happily turning around and grabbing the roast and the other assortments of food and bringing them to the table for everyone to dig in and enjoy.

Shepard worked on cutting the roast as Tali spooned out some vegetables and fruit mixes onto Nadja's plate before she handed it to her husband who placed a piece of the roast onto the plate before handing it to Nadja. An innocent smile spread across her face as she took the plate and held it up to her nose and felt the collection of smells satiate her noise in a loving embrace that made her mouth water and her brain to squeal in excitement.

"Srinvas'ete Ghell (Love you Mom)! Srinvas'ete Dehl (Love you Dad)! Srinvas'ete Borla!" She exclaimed happily.

Their daughter's excitement never seemed to fail making them happy when they heard her voice chime and jingle merrily in the house. It made them forget their dark pasts and the pain they suffered to get here. Tali even looked down at her prosthetic biomechanical hand, which she flexed slowly. She had almost completely forgotten the horrible incident that had claimed her hand and had scarred her. Most of the medical treatments had cleared away most of the scarring tissue and most of the scarring that couldn't have been fixed was barely noticeable. Her hand had completely integrated itself into her system making it work and move like a normal hand, feeling pain every so often. She couldn't thank Mordin enough for giving her back her hand.

The quiet family softly ate their food, enjoying their time together for dinner amid its almost cliché setting and atmosphere. After everything, they just wanted something simple and run of the mill, somewhere to relax that isn't blowing up or trying to kill them.

The spices of the food were spectacularly rubbed into the roast. The herbs and spices were freshly picked from the side gardens, dried and rubbed into the meat, covering both sides while a series of more powerful herbs were placed inside of the bone running through the middle. As the roast had cooked, the flavors from the inner herbs melted through the meat from the core outward while the outside herbs melted inward, seeping through the layers of meat connecting with the outward explosion of taste.

The other side dishes were equally flavored to a magnificent degree, but not as intensely as the main roast. Each added sweet and tangy flavors to the main dish, supplementing the already amazing flavor like a solid sauce. Nadja's dad hummed to himself as his eyes rolled back slightly, chewing on the food, enjoying the flavors singing to his tongue.

"Nehya… You have out done yourself." Shepard smirked. The cute Khelish name he called her made her blush and raise her pride in cooking. "It wasn't as hard as calibrating a superficial main eezo drive core was it?" The smirk grew to a smug face.

"You have no idea… I thought my fingers were going to fall off rubbing those spices into it. I would spend three days straight rewiring the bulkhead calibration sensors while in a zero-g environment than recreate what I had to go through to make this." She laughed. They both laughed.

"I think you are an excellent cook, easily one of the best that I have had the honor of tasting." He winked.

"Dad… Stop it…" Nadja complained knowing full well of what he was sending innuendos for as he spoke.

Her father laughed. "You know I didn't mean it like that Nadja…"

"Then what was the wink for…?" Nadja pointed out.

"That was a gift to your mother." He chuckled.

Nadja lulled her head back at his response. "How was I even born from you two?" She laughed.

Shepard stood and grabbed the tablecloth and yanked it off the table leaving everything where it was. He wrapped it around his shoulders and grabbed two glasses and put them up to his eyes. He turned quickly letting the curve of the glasses to distort his eyes and make them much larger than they were. He raised a solitary finger to the sky why striking a dramatic and overdone pose.

"You were born… for science!" He spoke heartily.

Nadja laughed in her chair and even Tali found herself putting her head on the table and laughing at how ridiculous he looked. He walked with a high and mighty stance over to her.

"You better get your nutrient supplements that your mother unit has created. We must run tests later." Nadja laughed harder.

He set the glasses on the table and cringed away from Nadja. "Oh no! She is blinding me with psychic biotics… My eyes! I can't see!" He played. "What have we created?" He fell to the ground pleading to Tali and grabbing her robes. She fell from her chair down to the floor with him, her face red and her eyes filled with tears from laughing so hard. Nadja jumped down and tackled her father. "No now she is going to eat me!" He could barely keep a serious tone in his voice anymore.

Nadja sat on her father's chest, softly rising and falling as he stared up into her soft and innocent face, red from laughing and her teeth showing from her breathing hard. Tali was lying next to him, arm locked in his as they looked at Nadja. The preciousness hadn't lost its charm yet. They knew how lucky all of this was and they cherished every day amid the complaining and difficulty of raising Nadja who had proven herself to be one of the most mischievous of children on Rannoch, but that just made them love her more.

They enjoyed the peace that came with their retirement along with the seclusion from the galactic news who constantly pestered them about an interview along with the millions of racy reporters claiming to have racy pictures of the hero of the galaxy's wife, of which weren't true as much as she did enjoy walking with no clothes on. Being wiped from the map along with the checks that tourists had to go through was enough that no individual could get the picture that the geeks of the galaxy wanted to see.

The last few days had been heavily stressful, but considering that whatever those things were, they had shown they more interested in that black cylinder than they were with actually harming the family and stealing their valuables. Their security had increased slightly, but nothing else changed in their way of life. Relaxing and enjoying life was their highest priority now along with giving Nadja a good life.

"You better finish eating your dinner Nadja. Wouldn't want to waste these magnificent nutrients. You need to grow into that strong creature." He smiled.

Nadja's smile grew softly as she looked into both the faces of her parents that tenderly smiled at her. More thoughts began to drift into her head, but they were slower, more deliberate and soothing. She asked herself questions about what she was looking at and she didn't care why she was because the questions only made her happier.

"How did these two creatures ever fall in love with each other, two different species with varying cultures and ideas, two different marriages to accommodate the differences along with different diets, for the most part? How did they make it work and still smile through it and love each other's presence? Considering the stories she heard of her parent's exploits across the galaxy, she questioned how they could have even survived this long to have her. She wondered if it was from this Shadow Broker character that she had heard from a few of his stories and eventually whom she had met in the basement. Why did it feel so familiar to her? She had stood in its presence, afraid of what it was, yet the feel of it felt close and related to her, like a mother or sister. It had talked to her like it already knew her reactions to what it was implying." She thought quickly to herself before she rose and sat back at her spot on the table and took another spoonful of vegetables.

Slight memories of her day began to return to her as she ate and she watched how she had won a soccer game for her team, but more shocking was when she saw Nesya. The feelings she had felt back then began to return to her and she remembered that she wanted to ask her parents about love.

"Mom… Dad… What is love?" She questioned slowly.

"It's simple. It is when you feel a strong attraction to someone and you get a feeling in your bones that you want to be with that person with the rest of your life." Shepard explained.

"Does it just seem to happen sometimes… like just happen, just like that?"

"Sometimes… why are you asking us? Did you fall in love?" Shepard teased.

Nadja's face flushed red and she shook her head. "N-no… I was just curious…"

"It's the boy that you were talking with at school when I swung by isn't it?" He smirked.

"No… I don't think it was… ugh… with a boy…" The words were difficult to say and she found herself biting her tongue angrily at saying them.

The prying smirk her father had when he had first asked vanished slightly. "You think you fell in love with another girl at the school?" He asked.

"…Yeah…" She spoke softly.

"Does she know? Have you told her your feelings?" Shepard asked.

Her eyes perked up. She could have sworn that she was going to be told that she was wrong and that she truly didn't love someone of the same gender, but instead she found that her father was more focused on if the other girl liked her back. It felt strange talking about such a concept at the dinner table.

"I think she knows… but I haven't told her my feelings…" She spoke softly.

"The best thing would be to tell her how you feel. She might feel the same way about you. Why the sudden change to liking girls?" Tali interjected.

"I don't know…" Nadja answered feeling more embarrassed by the second.

"You were flirting with that one guy just a few days ago. What happened to him?" Shepard asked.

Nadja retraced her memory back to when she had seen the boy in question. She gained the same feeling at the thought that she did when she remembered Nesya. "I… like him too…" She admitted.

An awkward silence shattered the conversation and left them slowly chewing on the remnants of their food.

"Both you say?" Shepard asked, chasing a pea-like vegetable with his spoon.

"I don't know… Both of them are nice and both of them are… attractive… Both of them make me feel like…" she turned to her father and thought about the phrase she was looking for. "Spiders in my stomach…?"

"Butterflies?" Shepard corrected.

"Yeah… butterflies in my stomach…" She lowered her head partially in shame, but mostly out of a collective embarrassment.

"You know that whoever you pick… me and your mother will support you. You deserve to be happy and that means with anyone of any gender or race." He threw her a disarming smile. "I mean look at me and your mother. We were like many human and quarian couples out there, other than our adventures on the Normandy, but we were still happy and even then a fluke chance brought you to us and me and your mother even closer." Tali and Shepard leaned closer together. Nadja found the cliché couple setting to be humorous and began to drive the embarrassment from her.

"Really?" She asked hopefully.

"If you go with a female quarian or a male Krogan it doesn't matter to us. As long as it makes you happy… but please… no animals." He laughed. Nadja had to laugh with him.

She was surprised at how well her parents were at calming her nerves and understanding her. They had no xeno-prejudices or racial prejudices or more importantly they were not homophobic and they found such a way of thinking natural and an area to explore to find true happiness.

"If you want to date this girl you are looking at then I can tell you a story when your mother had a close encounter with a quarian who thought I was rather good looking and thought I was going to sleep with her." She laughed.

"No thanks mom…" Nadja felt a name appear in her head along with a face. _Hani…_ She imagined her to be a rather striking woman with an incredible open attitude about her with dance moves unmatched.

She wondered where these thoughts were coming from, but it easily made her smile. She just imagined dancing with this mysterious woman in a nightclub with some awesome music playing. She came back to reality and stared at her observing parents.

"Thanks… I'm sure I'll be able to figure it out." She tossed her own disarming smile at her parents.

"Good to hear Sweetheart." Shepard smiled. Tali nodded and gave her smile of acceptance.

"Can I go to my room and think about it for a bit?" She asked.

"As long as your plate is clean." Tali answered.

She raised her clean plate and smiled like she was going to get her picture taken for a mug shot or scanned by the strange scanners that she had seen the uniformed quarians at the spaceport on the edge of town to get to the geth platforms orbiting the planet would pass over her when she got too close. Maybe everything would be alright.


	16. Chapter 15: Shadow's Embrace

A/N: Sorry for the long span of nothingness from me. Hopefully you will enjoy this chapter and I can restart pumping these things out and get this story cleaned up and finished so I can revise Into the Darkness and begin my more massive and secretive project but alas that is a long ways away from materializing considering the massive wait for just this dinky chapter to be released. Nonetheless... Critique if you so desire, complain if you must.

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Nadja walked away from the dinner table with a slight skip in her step as the tune that had repeated itself in her mind began to vibrate through her lips. Shepard and Tali watched as she left and smiled at their daughter's strange happiness considering it to be the cause of their little talk about love. Shepard hummed a slight satisfaction as he nodded and lifted his ceramic mug up to his lips and sipped softly at the contents.

"She seems to be in a perky mood." John remarked.

Tali folded her legs and stretched them out causing a small pop in her back to follow; she also took the moment to rub her toe against her husband's leg and smile to him. "Mostly normal again." She grinned, her eyes glittering with their usual brilliance when she had happy thoughts flicking around her thoughts.

John stared at her thoughtfully, his eyes detailing the gentle stare of Tali before enlarging outward and regaining the dimensions of her face and small skin imperfections that only added to her beauty. He sighed and followed her thin shoulder down to her arm to the fingers the softly scraping fingers on the tabletop. In just an instinctual moment, John reached out and took her hand, feeling its smoothness and warmth as her other hand came over hand shielded his hand on hers. He softly moved his fingers from underneath, caressing both the upper and lower hand causing Tali to smirk and poke at one of his fingernails.

"Such is the question of love…" Tali softly remarked.

"Yes. It still remains a mystery to even the farthest of stars out there… It just seems to be the only thing that unites others and breaks others away from others," The human commented on deeply.

"Trying to be one of those grasping philosophers, John? I never pictured you as such…" The quarian slid her chair closer to her human partner.

"Oh yeah? What exactly did you picture me as?" John joked as he set his mug down and draped his arm over his companion.

"Hmm…" Tali hummed in a satisfied pleasure. "I saw you as more of the type that would rather just experience it than to just think about it."

"I thought I did…" John nuzzled his face into Tali's neck and softly showered it with kisses as she cringed it back out from their gentle tickles.

"John!" She lovingly pushed his head back before he pushed her slightly back and kissed at her collarbone, climbing up until he silenced her objections. Instead she only hummed and let herself melt again into his arms.

Meanwhile, Nadja walked into the bathroom of their house and looked at herself in the mirror. Her innocent form sat under only a small covering of fabric that she quickly tossed to the side to get a better look of her features. She questioned when she would grow breasts like her mother, but even that slight thought caused a flush of color on her face and she put her hands over her chest feeling as if such a thought was inappropriate. She broke her own eye contact with her mirror self before coming to the realization that such a thought was a rather immature thought. She lowered her arms from her chest and looked more at her face, young and innocent like the rest of her body.

"Nadja… what are you ever going to do with this much pretty?" Nadja joked with herself. She stuck her tongue out at herself before catching a slight flash of red from somewhere.

Her joking expression quickly transformed into a curious and slightly drawn back stare as she neared the mirror to look at her eyes, where she had thought she had seen the flash of light. She was almost pressed against the mirror staring into her eyes that she sighed and closed them, pressing her forehead against the polished glass and sighing.

"What did I say about seeing things?" She asked herself.

She smirked at her coy little games as she snagged her brush and began work cleaning her teeth and preparing for bed. Nadja slammed the toothbrush into her mouth and scratched it against her teeth, filling her mouth with foam and garbling her speech, yet she talked out loud to herself anyway.

"Look at yourself Nadja…" She spoke through the brush and foam. "Are you crazy? You fell in love with another girl… that isn't right… I need to find some handsome boy to hold me." She grinned at the prospect.

She made up some sort of protest and pulled the toothbrush out of her mouth and pointed it at her mirror image. "Who cares if you felt a stronger feeling for her than any other boy, the fact still remains."

"And who are you to say that you must only be restricted to boys?" She began to verbalize her thoughts.

"Cause I would want kids eventually… and to know what is the big deal with… sex." Nadja trilled her toothbrush in front of her, slightly embarrassed by her desire to understand such an adult concept.

"You know you won't have any…" She spoke uncontrollably.

"What?" She asked herself not fully grasping that she was still talking to herself in the mirror.

"You heard me…" She spoke again, this time she caught the change in the tone of her eyes. They were darker and thick with some sort of pain or resentment.

"What do you mean 'me'? I am you." Nadja pointed out to her own image, shocked at the whole event.

She watched in slight horror as one of her eyes began to glow a red instead of the soft white. Her memories quickly began to fill with burning images of another's. She gripped the side of the sink as though she was about to fall over as her head began to pull itself closer to the mirror. Nadja attempted to shut her eyes at feat of the whole event, still too stubborn to scream for her parents for help. A sudden jerk caused her to open her eyes and come eye to eye with the red glow. She felt the feeling in her legs begin to disappear as her gaze began to fall into a dream-like state. The images began to play like movies of history past. She saw the rise and fall of many nations, but didn't understand who they were or why she was seeing this. Her vision quickly centered on a small glittering dot in the galaxy swirling in her vision. It zoomed toward it revealing the planet-side view of her home-planet Rannoch. She became slightly less afraid of her situation, seeing as she had some control over the situation, but quickly plummeted back into a swirling vortex of confusion and fear. A cold grip took her heart as she could almost feel the pull of gravity as she descended quickly to the surface.

Only took her a few seconds to grasp her location and see that she was viewing the outside of Nesya's house. The vision quickly flipped to the bedroom with Nesya softly lying. Nadja felt the dull pull on her heartstrings as she saw her and tried to fight back and leave the room. Instead she saw her hand raise up toward her hand softly stroke her hair before she suddenly felt the air ripped from her lungs and the light quickly change to that of her bathroom. She fell on the floor, gasping for air as she found that her hand had only ran into her own hair, but the feelings in her pounding heart surprised her more. She didn't want to tell her parents of this event. She regained her composure and avoided her reflection, fixing her hair softly and cleaning the sink of toothpaste.

"You are tired. You need to sleep, just a walking dream." She spoke to herself as she entered her bedroom and climbed into bed, still completely devoid of clothing. Nadja stared at the ceiling, expecting some sort of answer to be shown on the ceiling for her or some sort of explanation to be given for these changes in her body and the strange occurrences that she faced almost on a daily basis. A deep breath into her lungs cooled her heart as she stared back at the ceiling where shadows danced in their joyous waltz of the outside light. Nadja pulled the covers up to her shoulders and turned to the black wall. She didn't want to think of shadows this night.

_The blackness of her dreams was quickly illuminated by an orange glow of a fire in the distance. Nadja felt her legs touch upon solid earth, somewhere in the dark void beneath her. Her heart began to increase in intensity as she tried to see what was creating the light that she found herself compelled to approach, much like the curious animals in the wilderness. At each footfall a burst of illumination kissed at her feet and showed her the narrowness of the path that she tread on. It only made her more nervous as she continued closer to the light._

_Details began to form and she saw it to be a floating flame, not much bigger than her fist, sitting about eye level to her. The shockwave illumination of her feet showed her that this flame sat about in the center of a large platform. Mystery and wonder began to cloud her senses of fear and recoil of the darkness. She almost felt as though she should embrace it, but kept herself reserved from those feelings. The light was beautiful to her and sparked so many different memories of happiness that she reached out to its warm and comforting glow. The flame did not burn her as her fingers played around in the flames, warming her body with a sense of security and her heart with the unique warmness of love's embrace. Nadja squeezed her hand to grab the flame and pull it closer to her body, but the flame suddenly jumped out and flew just out of reach._

_The young quarian giggled at the playful flame and reached for it again and watched it escape again, flickering with what she perceived as delight. She leaped at the flame with a final attack, trying to envelop the flame with her chest, but the flame shot out against her and faded into the darkness again. Nadja readied herself to pursue the flame again, but saw the flame enter a dark form. Flames erupted from two large ports as a large form began to stir and shake the platform at which she stood. The fear and recoil quickly broke through and she stumbled backward, away from the nightmare forming in front of her._

_The dark machine rumbled and groaned as fire filled the outward holes and the ominous room was filled with a glowing light that shattered the darkness revealing the mausoleum of her mind. The machine rose up and reached out for her platform, tearing it apart and causing her to begin to tumble down the side of it. She reached out in a hope that someone would catch her. Just as her body left the breaking platform a strong grip snagged her arm. She looked down at the machine churn and quake as fire ripped and tore at its exterior, angry at the world around it._

_Nadja quickly looked up to see her savior and found it to be her father's face, staring down at her with utmost determination to not let her fall, a show of pure love seeping through the edges as all his strength was devoted to holding her. The thought alone caused her heart to tremble with the love for her father as he hoisted her up and onto the leaning platform. She leaped at him and hugged him close, but the sudden quake of the platform told her to run for safer ground. A low set moan below her told her that the nightmare was still out to get her. As her light feet tapped against the ground, the lower ground trembled with each piercing step of the mechanical monstrosity._

_The ground began to break and shatter, as her feet became lighter and lighter falling deeper and deeper into the soft crumbling platform. She jumped when she guessed the ground would no longer keep her moving and found herself struggling, halfway on solid ground to regain her footing and pulling herself up. A sudden snag on her feet caused her to panic and as she felt it suddenly tug her down toward the ground. A quick glance down showed her the hooks and cables of a line that had clamped around her foot, tied to the machine that looked at her hungrily. She reached for anything again, hoping for her father's hand to save her, but found none as only her fingertips held her to the solid outcrop._

_A revelation suddenly struck her as the sounds of the evil machine began to fade from her thoughts and memories. Everything began to slow as the claw became weaker against her leg. She felt a power inside of her grow. Nadja glanced back down at the machine and understood its woe and misery, instantly relating to it being just as afraid as her, looking for someone to grab onto and hold it. It all struck her as odd before she let the ground slip away from her fingertips and she fell down to the grumbling machine below._

_Instead of killing or eating her, as she had been so afraid that it had planned for her, she found that it extended a helping hand to her, softly taking her, gently holding her. It held her close as the warm flames that resided inside of it, warmed her entire body. The scared groans began to diminish as the machine began to settle down and rest upon the beaten ground of where it had panicked for being afraid and alone. Her inner demon had been beat with just the simple task of letting go. The thought began to take hold of her as she fell into a deep meditation on what this had all meant; her thoughts quickly realizing it to be only a dream and breaking her free._

Nadja's eyes softly opened as she saw the morning sun on her ceiling. She was not wet as she would have thought amid the nightmare, nor was she in any way frightened by what her dream made her think about. She had seen herself run from what she perceived to be a demon inside of her when really it was just as afraid and lost as herself. How this was so? She could not quite place her finger on it, but deep down it began to make more sense than the blind fear or shock she had viewed the strange happenings with.

She rose from her bed and walked around her room, her body cooling in the morning breeze that kissed her skin. She felt no desire for clothes or to do any such daily task. Nadja was more inclined to just sit and think, meditate and train her mind. She stared at herself in the mirror again, taking in her natural body and realizing its own inherent beauty. She didn't see any conceit in her realization for she began to see the beauty of everything around her along with all of its ugliness. Every view on everything in the room began to cleanly fill her mind without the confusion and headache as she had experienced in the past.

The quarian could only smile at the realization of the circumstances and of the fundamental equality of everything in the universe. Her condition only became a part of her and it quickly integrated itself into her thought patterns. Every step she took in the real world still sent a shockwave of illumination around her as she saw the effects of her steps. It excited her to see how these things worked and how understanding made even the most ugly of things beautiful and the most beautiful of things ugly. Everything began to show itself as only a subjective, which only excited Nadja more, but just at the peak of her enjoyment of raw understanding a voice snapped her mind back to her innocence.

"I spy the uncovered bottom of a happy morning girl!" Tali teased in the doorway.

Nadja ripped the covers from the bed and swung them around her body.

"Mom! Why were you looking?" Nadja laughed back.

"Please honey… you have an attractive backside." Tali continued to tease.

Nadja could only laugh at her mother's words before looking back into the mirror and looking into her own eyes. A slight flicker of red told her all she needed to know before she ran over to her mother and jumped into her arms.


	17. Chapter 16: Schizophrenia

The little quarian girl scampered toward the bathroom as her mother chased her playfully, the light blanket flipped through the air like a cloudy cape before she was picked up and pushed toward the shower. Nadja could only giggle and squeal at the delight of her mother's gentle fingers and powerful arms hoisting her into the giving her the feeling of flight before setting her back on the ground, tangling both daughter and mother inside of a blanket cocoon.

Tali wrapped herself around her chuckling daughter and blew hard into her side causing the noise that always filled Nadja with glee and delight. She squirmed to escape her mother's grasp, but she was no match and had to endure another gust of wet air on her side. Nadja thrashed about hoping to escape before a third blast could tickle her skin and much to her delight, the blanket fell between her and her mother causing her lips to get stuck in the fabric. Nadja used the distraction to squirm free and escape the blanket trap. The young child ran to the corner of the room, trying to catch her breath, holding her heart from the happy tingle it felt.

The blanket softly fell from around Tali; her hair was cast into a frizz about her head as she turned with a smile back at Nadja who cringed back defensively. Nadja noticed the slight glistening of the saliva around her mother's mouth, which caused her to feel the wet mark along her side.

"Mom…" Nadja whined, "You spit all over me…" The nude girl wiped the wet spot from her side in a disgusting manner, and flicked her hand as to whip the germs off of her hand.

"Nadja… you know that my saliva and your saliva are closely related?" Tali stated as she took the time to begin combing her fingers through her hair to get it back together.

"It is?" Nadja asked, instantly perplexed and curious as to what her mother was getting at.

"Well you already know where babies come from…" Tali began.

"Yeah! First Dad puts his-" Nadja interrupted and began before Tali raised her hand quickly.

"I know you know," Tali chuckled, "No need to go into detail. The thing is with biology is that you do come from me and your father but you are half me and half him."

"But I am Nadja aren't I?" Nadja joked, she had already assumed as much from biology, but she had never gone into much detail about it causing the topic to intrigue her.

Tali smiled and hummed slightly at Nadja's response. "Yes, Nadja… You are you, but you can also be considered 'we', that is if you look at that way."

"How do you know so much about biology when you are an engineer?" Nadja proclaimed.

"This is simply biology little one. You may be half of your father, and me but you are a special person. You beat the odds and did what no other child before us had done. You survived and you created the first and only hybrid child. Modern science still points to you having been impossible, yet…"

Nadja began to grin happily at the mention of how she was special. Her childish conceit began to form worlds of grandeur and fame based solely on this fact of her. The first and only hybrid… She felt like she was at the top of Rannoch.

"No other babies have even been able to be conceived given the miracle cure that Mordin found." Tali added, causing Nadja's facial expression to drop slightly. Tali didn't notice. "But that is enough grown-up chit chat for you. Now get in the tub and get ready for some breakfast, you have a busy day ahead of you.

"Busy day?" Nadja moaned with dissatisfaction.

"You have school today… don't you remember?" Tali teased, tickling Nadja's stomach.

"Oh yeah…" Nadja rolled her eyes and smiled, she felt the joy of being able to return to her regular days at school with her friends. She also figured that she would also try to put her sexuality to rest by seeing how her body felt about the two differing people at school that she knew had produced the strongest feelings inside of her.

"Now get your shower and get your robes on, you know the drill." Tali pushed Nadja to the tub set-up and smacked Nadja's small bottom before leaving the bathroom. "Keelah Se'lai Nadja… Enjoy yourself at school." She shut the door.

Nadja's mind quickly remembered her mother talking about how she had been the only hybrid ever born and even with this so called "miracle cure" that it was showing itself to be impossible for quarians and humans to conceive children similar to herself. The gravity of the situation was both satisfying and slightly frightening. Was it so hard to have similar beings such as she was? Her ponderous mind began to delve for reasons for her own existence which she had already questions a year before, right around the time that her parents saw just how intelligent their daughter was.

If her parents had been given the very first strand of this "cure" then that would make them the least likely to be able to conceive, yet they conceived on their first try. Nadja's mind started to crunch some imaginary numbers. She grimaced slightly at her zero result before shrugging and turning on the water to the tub, the steam already beginning to rise up. She reached out and let her fingers swim in the streaming water, feeling its downward pressure before she flipped the switch to the shower, watching the water go from its heavy stream to rain like intensity. She softly rested one leg inside of the water and watched as the water beaded and ran down her leg like Cerulean Snails of the Hades Gamma Cluster. It wasn't long before she stepped the rest of the way into the shower and felt the warm embrace of water cast her in a wet field of comfort.

Her slight tired feeling ran off of her body, stolen away by the wakening water. Nadja relaxed and bent slightly so the water could give her an excellent back massage. She sighed with delight as it cured her of her sore muscles from the soccer game the night before. The thought of soccer placed her back at the beach where she saw herself looking back into Nesya's eyes and feeling a strange euphoria encapsulate her vision and melt her heart. There was just something about her, who she was, or maybe something about her appearance. Nadja's memory felt blurred in what exactly she felt and it grinded her gears that she couldn't remember it.

She wondered if her strange "power" could help remind herself as to the happenings at that evening at the beach. She concentrated, but found that she didn't even know how to use them in anyway. Her trip to Nesya's was all accidental and she had no recollection of what exactly crossed her mind or what she was feeling at that point. An exasperated sigh filled the shower as she grunted in frustration.

"What is the point of having these nifty powers if you don't know how to use them?" She groaned at herself before shoving her palms against her eyes and rubbing them, annoyed.

She sighed again before shutting the water off and letting her body drip-dry a bit. She watched as each drop fell from her short hair and onto the tub floor, exploding on impact into a watery crater. She equated the sound of the falling drops to the dying dribbles of a hard rain slipping off the edges of leaves and edges. Nadja shut her eyes and focused on the sounds. It steadied her mind and focused her senses enough to see the clock in the corner and see that she was going to not have enough time to eat breakfast.

Nadja leaped from the tub and slung a towel around, wiping and drying her smooth skin off quickly and efficiently. She ran down the hall to her room and rummaged through her dresser and snagged a robe and delicately tied and looped it around in her regular fashion. She also slid on a pair of tighter fitting underwear as to avoid exposing herself during school to the intergalactic students that may arrive on this day. She remembered the look of one child when he witnessed a breast fall out of a parent's robe when they hugged their child. Nadja didn't have any breasts and knew the next intimate thing lay between her legs; she blushed slightly at the thought.

She finished throwing on the other articles of clothing and walked out to the kitchen area where an already steaming bowl of food was sitting out for her to eat. Nadja had grown to like warm breakfast versus the cold breakfast that occurs most of the time among her parents. She smiled with delight as the young quarian lifted her spoon up to her mouth and enveloped the food, feeling the flavor satiate her tongue and calm her head. Nadja hummed with satisfaction and found herself nodding in agreement and pleasure from the food. John and Tali simply watched her eat along with performing their regular kitchen chores. Nadja finished in record timing, wiping her mouth clean of any residue that had managed to not make it into her mouth and into her belly.

"Hungry?" her father asked looking across the table at his daughter.

"Starving," Nadja answered with a smirk.

"Full?" John asked with a grin spreading across is face.

"Quite," Nadja answered.

"You two and your one work question and answer game… Nadja, you're going to late for school, you better get going. John… stop keeping your daughter from school." Tali pointed a humorous finger in his direction.

"No." Shepard answered, smiling more. Nadja began to smile as she noticed her father still only using one-word responses.

"Yes." Tali retorted, beginning to lose her serious composure to the pleasure of having this game with her husband.

They stared long and hard at each other as Nadja observed between her two parents, the strange bond that had brought them together. Her skin tingled to the shear power of their connection which only drew her senses more to her own separate bonds that she would be testing in school soon enough. She sighed and scratched her head as her nerves began to grow and her questions of love still seemed clouded and vacant of an answer. Nadja simply grabbed her school supplies and tried to follow her mundane path.

"Have fun at school Nadja." Her parents spoke equally.

She tossed them a disarming smile before walking out of the kitchen and out the door into the bright and warm sun. She always enjoyed the feel of its heat on her skin and the light that it bathes the landscape with. She walked down the path connecting her home with the rest of the quarian civilization, her footsteps providing the percussion to an ambient orchestra with the sigh of the wind, the soft beating of the grass shoots, and the distant choir of yelling quarians and humans in the town below. Nadja extended her arms out and basked in such a beautiful moment, instantly regaining her sense of oneness with everything in the galaxy. A serene smile broke across her face before she opened her eyes to the world around her, finding she had already covered the distance of her hill and was down only a few buildings away from the local school.

She walked around the final fence of the school grounds, keeping her eyes open for either Xel or Nesya, but the fury of children running around made it difficult. Nadja strolled through the kids, smiling and laughing with the few people that knew her, but most of her attention was focused on her desire to put her heartstrings to rest.

"Hello Nadja…"

Nadja's heart tickled and fell to her stomach when she heard the voice. The voice was not as afraid as Nadja would have expected it to be given what she had done. She slowly turned around and saw Nesya standing in front of her. The slightly older quarian girl stared at her while nervously rubbing her arm and obviously trying to find words to tell Nadja.

"About that time on the beach…" She seemed distracted as she avoided eye contact with Nadja. "I don't know what to say…" She made a half attempt at a laugh, but it came out forced and fake.

"I don't either…" Nadja found herself staring at Nesya like she had never stared at anyone before. Something began to squirm inside her and her vision had to fall to the ground to maintain her composure. "But it was strange…"

"Yeah… it was… don't tell anyone…" Nesya brushed passed Nadja as she jogged to her classroom.

Nadja stared at Nesya's retreat and just felt both doubt and happiness fill her. She breathed out as her heart rose back to where it rightfully should and her vision became less focused on Nesya and caught the amount of people that had began to walk past her to their classes. The quarian girl cleared her throat and realigned her bag to gather her thoughts and try to fully understand what her senses were telling her. Nadja smiled but quickly shook her head and frowned.

"Get a grip of yourself… Xel… Xel…" She forced out Nesya and tried to picture Xel.

She walked down the hall and to her classroom and walked through the door into the bustle of the room. Her vision felt glued to the floor when she noticed that Xel's seat was filled, but she only caught it with the corner of her eye. In an attempt to nonchalantly look in his direction, Nadja pushed her hair back and looked over her shoulder and found Xel staring at her already. The same feeling burned through her body and her heart fell back into her stomach again.

The mood shattered as her leg collided with the far desk and she fell to the ground, her face instantly burning red with embarrassment. The room instantly fell silent as everyone turned to her. The awkward silence hurt her more than the laughing that followed. She gathered her things and jogged over to her seat in the corner and stared at the top of her desk.

"They are the same…" Nadja rattled to herself trying to tune out the laughter.

"Who's the same?" Xel asked her sitting in the desk in front of her.

"Nothing… just muttering to myself… you know. I'm nervous." She fiddled around with her hands and tried to convey a better meaning that never formed.

"Just as long as you are okay, that was quite a fall you had there." He spoke to her in a tone that comforted her immensely.

"I'm fine… thank you." She tossed him another smile.

"Keelah Se'lai Nadja." He stated as he retreated from her and back to his chair on the other side of the room.

Nadja felt her heart thump against her chest and could have sworn that it was moving her entire chest; she looked down just to make sure, but before she got a good look the door slammed and a different teacher entered the room.

"Class… I am going to be taking the place of your last teacher for he has fallen ill to the adjustments of the drug to his body. My name is Mr. Krtech and as you may have noticed I am a human teacher." Mr. Krtech spoke in an authoritative tone.

Nadja made note of his finally pressed suit and stiff postured form. He felt and looked just like the other men that frequently asked for her father at home. The slam of his finger on the touch screen board was almost irritating and completely unnecessary. Nadja felt the sparks of anger and annoyance at the man grow with each over-emphasized jab at something that would barely take a touch to work.

The man finished his version of a chalkboard scratch and turned back to the class who all held grimaces on their faces except Nadja who shown more anger than annoyance.

"You… quarian girl in the corner. Why do you have such a defiant face to the simple action of a teacher teaching his class? Come to the class of the room and apologize for your insubordinate behavior!" He cracked at her

An inner rage began to snap in Nadja as she saw her eyes beginning to flicker red after she put her head on her desk in an attempt to stop the rage, but it quickly grew out of control. She quickly felt the control of her body disappear and her body relax and the red vision disappear. She saw herself rose, as if she was now looking through a camera and saw her body stand slowly and walk up to her teacher. Her body stared briefly at him sending a wall of texts and pictures up her right eye telling her everything about the man's history. Just as she was about to let the words of hate and distaste could escape her mouth, she turned back toward the class and bowed, folding her hands.

A familiar voice filled her mind just as the sound of the world around her vanished. Nadja regained control and rose up quickly to say the apology and to get back to her chair, but she found everyone in the room was frozen inside of a spatial disturbance. "I needed to warn you of your temper Nadja…"

"What… What is going on?" Nadja questioned as she poked the teacher to no effect.

"I needed enough time to explain myself to you and I needed to do it now, so what best way to save time than to stop time itself, gives us enough talking time to flesh out your issues and to give you that serene state of mind you have been feeling bursts of the entire day. I know you have felt them." The inner voice seemed amused. "You are making me very proud Nadja…"

Nadja looked around the room for the voice sounded as if it were emanating from the walls, ceiling, and floor. She began to feel the ominous fear of being trapped inside of the classroom, the only being able to move.

"Why is everyone frozen?" Nadja asked.

"Like I said young one, I needed time to get you to understand the gravity of your situation." It spoke.

"But… I'm only seven." She reasoned.

"But as you know you are also one with this universe." It appeared amused again.

"Yeah but I'm only-"

"Seven? I heard you the first time, but just look at your hands and your body, look at the components, the atoms, the elements, and the materials. Each and all are as old as this universe. Only your being, your consciousness and mind are seven years old… well… part of it is seven years old." It stated.

"What do you mean part?" Nadja asked.

"The other part is a million times older than you… older than the other life present in this galaxy, surviving genocide and extinction." The voice spoke almost sadly. "A part that has had to suffer through the loss of loved ones of all sorts: family, spouse, and friends. This being has lost most of its senses and turned bitter, cold and calculating. It no longer registers love for the reasons of not wishing to be hurt, though memories of them live on and echo amid the darkness within this being's heart. Even when it manages to see the loved ones again, it tends to forget how to show its affection and instead tries to simply help in the most straightforward way possible. Only one final act of the purest of love was given by the being before it reintegrated."

"Reintegrated? And what was this final act?" Nadja asked, gaining perplexity at the words that filled the room.

"Your mind is being updated with the mind of the old one. That is what is reintegrating. As for the act…" The voice paused as if in thought. "The being gave a small black cylinder to the parents of the chosen recipient of the integration."

"But that's-"

"Our time is up… please give your speech. Your class is waiting…"


	18. Chapter 17: Release

Nadja looked around the room, still slightly taken aback by the magical qualities of the powers that she was witnessing. Deep inside of her she could feel that this was her power as a churning force quivered her insides and fluttered her heart. It scared her deeply at the same time she had grown to almost love it. Her understanding of how her body was reacting to the different messages and dreams had padded this revealing to her as to not cause her to collapse onto the floor and lose control completely. Deep inside she knew if she didn't accept this being, this power, and if it knew her fear then something terrible would be placed on, though such a threat was never stated nor implied in any of the being's strange intrusions. It felt like an imaginary friend that was out to help her with the more stressful situations with her life and keep her company. The prospect sent a warmth through her heart and she smiled at a blank patch of air and nodded as if the being existed in that spot for that time being, she imagined the mysterious quarian woman nodding back at her.

She took a deep breath in and shut her eyes, holding the darkness along with her breath. The pause made the entire world silent except for Nadja's beating heart that thumped inside of her chest with a renewed confidence. As she opened her eyes, the sound amplified causing the world to regain its cacophony of comfortable and familiar noises. Her entire experience with her friend had existed in only a blink of her life, a blink to everyone in the room, a blink to even her more knowing and observant parents. A quick breath in gave her enough time to refocus her mood to match the atmosphere of the surrounding classroom.

"I am sorry for being disobedient." She ate her words, but the teacher didn't mind and nodded respectfully.

"Right. Now class… this was your first lesson in galactic defense social interactions. In the galaxy that we live in today, it is best to know when to just concede and drop a subject than to pursue it and blow it out of proportion and miss the point. Young Nadja here could have performed her right of civil disobedience and disregard me or even challenge my demands for reparation on such an overblown attack on both a young and innocent child, but also one that deserved no such reprimand. " Mr. Krtech proceeded to lecture, instantly capturing much of the class's attention. "Instead of arguing and causing something as an apology account more than to keep a peaceful atmosphere, she swallowed her pride and confronted embarrassment.

A hand shot up in the third row. "But wouldn't there be more serious accusations that you should protest against?"

"Yes that is quite right, but we need to be aware of such differences and when to express ourselves differently. If someone happens to bump into you while walking through a busy space terminal, would you make an objection?"

"No…" The class stated in unison.

"If you found that a vendor was cheating you out of credits, would you make an objection?"

"Yes…" The voices were slightly more disjointed in response.

"What would you do Nadja…?" He asked her since she was still standing in the front of class.

"I would take my receipt and product to the authorities and report the vendor of being unfair." Nadja responded efficiently.

Mr. Krtech raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That would be one of the more preferred ways of approaching the situation, but an even better variation would be to not buy from the vendor at all…"

Nadja walked back to her desk as the teacher continued the lesson on social defense. She had grown to dislike visitor speakers especially ones that used tricks to gain the classes attention. Nadja simply stared blankly at the teacher pretending to listen and make sure he wasn't going to call on her. She glanced out from her spot on the side of the classroom and saw Xel looking at her. He instantly looked away from her, hidden in his suit and robes so as to not give Nadja a clear telling of if he was blushing or not, but she felt he was and it only filled her stomach with butterflies. She fiddled with her pencil that quickly flipped out of her hand and onto the floor.

It caused only the closest of her neighbors to look over at her, but they quickly refocused onto the teacher's long lecture on etiquette on a spaceport. It wasn't the first time she had inadvertently tossed her pencil by mistake and she knew it wouldn't be the last, causing her to sigh in exasperation before rising and grabbing the metal cylinder. The voice quickly kicked inside of her head to talk to her.

"Nadja… I will need to speak to you later tonight. It will be about a specific something that will make your parents incredibly happy, but you must keep it a secret until then. Enjoy your class and run on home, we will talk at your hidden grove." The voice quickly dissipated as she rose back in her chair. Nadja cautiously checked to see if any other heard the voice, but no one moved. _Still safe._

Much of the rest of the class consisted of group work as they re-enacted certain situations and filled in the gaps with appropriate responses. Nadja wished they would discuss more fundamental theorems on engineering, but the lesson's told her otherwise which put a drag on her morning, but the promise to be able to talk to her invisible friend about something that was sure to make her parents happy, filled her with excitement.

A sudden shot of joy filled her heart as the soft few beeps of the school's out system went off. She crammed her books into her school bag, hoisted it onto her shoulder and made her way out of the building along with the other children who went off on their respective ways to return home. Nadja scanned the heads and caught sight of Nesya one last time. As the crowd quickly dispersed into the buildings and blocks of the nearby houses, Nadja sank her head. She walked off toward the hidden grove, hoping the surprise that her friend had for her parents would cheer her up.

Xel poked his head around the corner of a nearby house and saw Nadja walking, not toward her house, but toward a group of thick bushes toward the ocean. He took a deep breath in before he began setting his feet in front of each other to catch up to her, but each step seemed to be difficult for him to take; not physically, but mentally, he was feeling a strain on what he wanted to do, what he wanted to tell her, ask her. Another breath quickly got his speed slightly higher, but he knew that he wouldn't catch up to her before she made it to the bushes, but he figured that having it far away from everyone would be the best solution.

Nadja marched toward the grove, sliding down the small embankment to the sandy beach. She almost half expected to see someone waiting for her, but she was old enough to know better that you couldn't see someone who was invisible. At the center of the beach, a gust of wind halted her movements and she looked around.

"Hello Nadja. Glad you could make it…" The voice seemed far more distant and deliberate in its tone.

"You knew that I would." Nadja chimed, growing with anticipation for the surprise.

"Yes I did and so did you. I know that there are still many answers left unanswered, but this is a point in your life where I will need to leave you." The voice spoke.

Nadja's mood flipped over. Where there was excitement, disbelief grew.

"But… but… I don't want you to leave… you've helped me so much. I-" Nadja struck back.

"Such powers still linger in you and will grow as you do. I cannot teach you how they work or if they will ever work for that matter, but my purpose does not reside in you, but resides in a better time. I am sorry Nadja, but you will have a future with a past filled with memories, but I cannot tell you anymore." Nadja raised her hands and saw the black mist that had engrained itself for so long on her body begin to float off of her and dissolve into the air.

"Wait… no… Come back! Please! Don't leave me…" the disgruntled quarian pleaded.

She tried to grab the particles and bring them back, but they appeared to travel straight through her fingertips before vanishing. The voice gave only a few parting words. "Tell your parents that you have been released."

The surrounding area quickly ceased to create any noise except the sigh of a way, slowly breathing out a breath almost like the last breath leaving the body before death.

Xel quietly sank back behind the bushes, shocked at what he had witnessed. He lost his train of thought and didn't know whether to run or to confront her and maybe act like nothing happened, redraw his original plans and execute them. He took the innocent route.

He strolled out slightly too hasty which he quickly caught and called out to his schoolmate.

"Nadja." It didn't come out too loud and a quiver was obvious in the tone.

Nadja heard the voice behind her, but an empty feeling had taken her. Her thoughts swam with questions about the purpose of her friend leaving. Was it something she had said, done, was going to do? Did she screw up something that her friend had planned? She turned slowly to Xel, not caring to show how upset she was over the disappearance.

"Oh… Hello Xel." Her voice trailed quickly.

"What's wrong?" Xel pretended to ask as if he didn't know.

"I… I lost a friend… gone… forever." The words hurt Nadja more than she expected them to; she lowered her head to hide from the glare coming from behind Xel's visor.

Suddenly Xel felt a pang of guilt take over his body and mind. He knew he couldn't just tell her what he had wanted to tell her. He thought hard about his options.

"What did you want to tell me?" Nadja asked, still staring at the ground.

"How did you…? Uh… yeah." Xel answered. "I don't know… maybe I should tell you another time when you are feeling better."

"It's fine… Ma'i is a good girl and you should tell her your feelings, don't worry she feels the same way…" Nadja rose and trudged toward her house, her world felt empty and lost. Her sorrow had blinded what she had done and what she had said to Xel. She just wanted to be alone, get the information out to her parent's cheer them up, get a shower and just sit in her room and think.

Xel gawked at the figure moving away from him. He had known to some degree that Nadja had had a crush on him, but how did she know about his love for Tia. No one knew, and he hadn't even told his friends about such an attraction. Many of his friends had thought that him and Nadja were going to get together when they saw him holding her hand, but no one seemed to know that she was telling him a story, using her hand as a prop. He had to admit that it was nice to hold it, but he almost felt like Nadja was his little sister and he could never bring himself to have romantic feelings for her. Nothing made sense that only made him try to forget everything that he had just seen and simply leave.

Nadja walked into her dark house, barely noticing that none of the lights were on. It was only by chance that she passed a table and saw a blinking message on a data pad. She read the words carefully and sighed.

_Dear Nadja,_

_We decided to go out to the space station to have some grown up time. Legion will be around to help you if you need anything._

_Love,_

_Your Parents_

Another sigh escaped her mouth as she continued her trek to get clean and lie in bed and hope the world just dissolves away. She didn't care anymore. The soft footfalls were slow and deliberate through her house. It was as if she had neither senses nor soul and was simply walked through the motions of a daily clean and sleep routine. Nadja shut the door to the bathroom.

Robe off, activate settings, decrease temperature and step in, rinse, soap, rinse, hair, rinse, face, rinse, water off, and towel. She felt an overbearing weight of redundancy that it grinded at her mind. Both hands reached up to her temped that she attempted to nurse by rubbing them, but her headache only grew with intensity. Eventually she found her eyes being squinted by the pain that cracked at her skull when it saw light. She stumbled slightly as the world began to churn and the pain felt as if her skull was being torn open with an old crowbar. Tears ran from her eyes, but there was so much pain coursing through her that she couldn't even scream. The pain caused her to feel dizzy and the threat of black out began to show its presence, and right at the start of it, everything ceased and the pain vanished. Nadja sighed just as the sea had sighed when the entity had left her body on the beach; her wetted eyes stuck staring up at the ceiling, unmoving.

Her body was paralyzed, but Nadja's mind still worked, scared and worried for her body and what had happened to it. She called out into the darkness of her mind for her friend to return and help her escape her mental prison. Was it even a prison? Her thoughts swam and whirled together as she tried to make sense of the situation, but nothing told her anything. With a sudden jolt, her body jerked slightly and her eyes moved slightly before blinking. An instant deep breath broke the silence of the bathroom.

Nadja bolted upright and felt the coolness of her body along with the cold sweat that formed during her black out or whatever that was. Strange enough, she felt a renewed sense of exploration and youthful energy fill her body. A sense of direction grew from the shadows along with many ideas for different games and challenges she could try, but the biggest thought that remained was what had happened. She attempted to focus her attention on the more serious question, but quickly found her other thoughts quickly wiping the question and answer away. Before she could even give it a second thought, the question for what had happened to her only moments before melted from her memory, vanishing in the far recesses of her mind.

An innocent shrug and smile later, and she found herself walking down the hall and into her bedroom, seeing her nude self in the mirror. There were no strange feelings about familiarity in it, or anything else that she remembered feeling before. She even checked her own rump and found that every egotistical question and observation she had made of herself had also vanished. It quickly began to dawn on her about what Xel had told her, how he had ruined any hope of them having a relationship. She sighed and tried to recount her thoughts better amid the hazy mess that filled her mind. Eventually Nadja stumbled upon the memory of Nesya.

The picture spontaneously appeared inside of her mind, melting her heart again and filling it with a warm sensation. Did she still love her? Xel's memory was brought up and her heart remained the way it was. The picture of Nesya returned and Nadja found herself smiling at the good memories between her and her friend. They had played on the playground together and had always been close, two of the best friends in the school and now she was feeling romantically about her. She found the sensations growing ever weirder and more powerful, but Nadja could only grin and smile at them. She loved the feeling and tried to imagine Nesya confessing her love to her made her heart soar; she still didn't understand the reason why. What is love? Nadja asked herself again.

The question burned inside of her mind, wondering what had happened inside of the bathroom that she peered around the room with a strange wonder at the world and was surprised to see that her thoughts appeared to be more focused and streamlined as if only one voice was speaking. A few memories filled in some of the gaps in her thoughts, but others remained a mystery, lost inside of a void though resting just at the tip of her tongue and her thoughts, though never taking shape.

A sudden swath of emotion filled her as the memory of Nesya's eyes looked inside of her mind. Filled with innocence and wonder for the world, Nadja felt she could stare in her eyes forever and never get bored with them. Why did it have to be Nesya? Why couldn't it have been one of the many boys in the school? More and more she began to wonder these things. Why was she attracted to other girls? It began to irritate her at the same time it felt as if her body was telling her to stop thinking.

Nadja had pictured herself in her mother's shoes, taking care of a Nadja-like daughter, singing and playing around the house, cook her dinner, and hold her close. Family and togetherness had always made her smile and even the though of being pregnant had made her giggle with glee. It would be excellent to be a mother and seeing in her daughter's eyes the desire for her to be like her mother. A grin stretched across her face, even deeper than the last. The few dolls she had sat in the corner of the room, all neatly dressed and sitting together peacefully, Nadja's own make-believe family. She leaned back onto her pillows, trying to picture a family setting, even given her young outlook on families. Surprised to find no nagging voice at the back of her head, Nadja breathed out in both a relief and sadness to a friend that she had just began to form friendly conversations with; ones that weren't simply logic based thoughts, but emotional interactions.

The pondering of such issues began to invade her mind. Amid all of her blank memories and reduced thoughts she felt comfortable and like such prowess still existed inside of her mind which was consistently proven with her mind still formulating more theories than she was used to before her hospital visit. A grumble demonstrated her irritation at the situation. The thoughts of the strange person helping her quickly evaded her thoughts with the only memory was of her being quarian and female, the visuals of how the woman looked melted from her mind. In its place, a picture of Nesya filled the face, or at least what looked like Nesya filled her place. Nadja could only grin at the thought and close her eyes. Her mental reconstruction broke her bad mood how she had hoped it would.


	19. Chapter 18: REM

The night began to cool the surrounding world as Nadja began to dose off and scrape along the lines of slumber. A quick turn and breath out sealed the deal as she collapsed under the weight of her own exhaustion, both physical and mental. Time passed quickly with only a few tosses and turns of her body as her body entered REM sleep, but instead of sleeping like usual something strange broke the peace of the night. Nadja's eyes opened slowly showering the room a deep red shade as her eyes crackled with red light. She stood up silently and turned her head to the window before softly setting her feet on the floor and walking more silent than any other being could even hope to accomplish. Her eyes snapped to a section of space where she stared without blinking for minutes.

Her eyes slowly fell closed again and her body turned back to her bed, making the same silent stroll as what had allowed her to get to the window and tucked herself perfectly back into bed where her dreams took off of her riding around in a space shuttle filled with her favorite quarian junk food.

Tali and Shepard walked through the front door of the house. Tali stumbled slightly and giggled louder than she should have at such a late time of the night while Shepard managed to snag her wrist and softly raise a finger to his lips even though the darkness obscured his message. Tali let a small squeal slip from her lips as she figured out what John was telling her.

"Why did you let me drink so much Johnny?" Tali asked in a half whisper.

"You were the one who lost count of how many you had." Shepard spoke with a more sober tone.

"I blame the krogan…" The quarian sputtered.

"You didn't need to do that to him." Shepard consoled as he helped Tali toward the bedroom.

"Bosh'tet."

"Tali…" John groaned.

"What? They will grow back." She smiled pleasantly.

"You know you are lucky right?" Shepard informed her, trying to get her moving better toward the bedroom.

"I knew I was lucky when I fell into your arms and we married each other…" Tali fell against Shepard's arms and cuddled warmly against his chest. "Each other…"

Slowly, John felt the weight of his wife increase on his shoulder. He quickly bent down and picked her up just as she fell asleep, softly snoring and leaking warm droll down his chest. He silently snuck past Nadja's dark room, listening to her breath deeply in her deep slumber. His head rolled back softly in gratitude that Tali's drunken noises hadn't disturbed her. The human continued down the hallway and broke through the darkness of his and Tali's room, softly placing her in her bed. A small grin crossed her face as she curled up and accepted the covers that Shepard pulled onto her shoulders. She murmured something before finally falling completely asleep but amid her quarian accent and the drunken emphasized accent that appeared to transcend all dialects her message was lost.

Nadja rested in her room as her dreams began to take shape and form from the shadows of her mind. Instead the happy dream that she had been experiencing a different dream began to eat at it, slowly consuming it to an image of stark reality bathed in a pool of shadows and revenge.

_A sudden weight fell on Nadja's shoulders as she felt the ground beneath her feet. Reality bit at her face as she felt a biting cold wind nip at her nose. The watering and irritation of her eyes told her that she was near the water along with the smell. A figure stood in front of her, standing at the precipice of the cliff side, being bathed in the mist of the crashing waves, reaching out to take her life. A sudden realization struck Nadja as she began to be told the identity of the person in front of her._

"_Nesya?" Nadja asked, though her words came out weak and staggered._

_Feeling slightly confused as to why her voice would be in such a shape, but when she took another breath in, she felt a sharp pain fill her lungs and the weight of injury pressed on her shoulders and she fell onto a knee, holding her heart, feeling a warmth run through her fingers. A strange sensation took her body, constricting and cold. She questioned if this was how death felt like and wondered why she was feeling this, feeling it now in this moment with Nesya standing just a few feet from her._

_Nesya turned around and looked at her with all of her innocence and youth, yet no smile graced her face. Instead a look of disgust and a deep-set hatred burned in her eyes. She raised an object she was holding in her hand, bringing it to eye level and aiming it right at Nadja. A wave of panic filled Nadja as her eyes widened and her heart jumped painfully._

"_Nesya… No…" Nadja reached out with her hand that had been holding her broken heart. _

_She saw the slight shimmer of blood on it just as a crack filled the air. Nadja stared blankly out at Nesya, the pain left her body as her thoughts began to cease and diminish, a tunnel of blackness enveloping her vision, still focused on Nesya. Nadja's last realization was of the hole through her head and strangely the peace that it brought to her. Her eyes closed slightly, but Nadja kept them open just enough to keep Nesya in her vision before the weight pulled her to the ground. Her head dully hit the ground and silently relaxed. A single tear fell from Nadja's eye._

Nadja quickly jumped up in her bed and quickly felt her face and head. She breathed hard and panicked at the thoughts and memories of the dream. She only remembered a few portions of it, but the gunshot and Nesya were vivid. Her thoughts couldn't keep up with everything that she wanted to consider and if it meant anything. In an attempt to find something pleasant to grab onto, she tried to remember her dream before the strange change, but she couldn't remember anything except the color purple.

The young quarian was forced to curl up into a ball and just stare at the wall, feeling the cold sweat cover her body, sending a shiver up her spine. The reality of the dream was hard to forget. Nadja found herself feeling a burning in the center of her forehead and simply couldn't shake the feeling that it had all truly happened. Quickly she could feel the tears well up and silently run down her face. She felt like she was losing herself and her mind quickly began to panic and reach out to grab something for comfort, but the nagging dream haunted her. Her eyes darted around the room, hoping to find something, but she found nothing. A dark shape filled her doorway, staring at her.

"Nadja? What's up?" Came the concerned voice of her father.

She found herself too wrapped up in her stark reality to answer. Instead two freshly formed tears ran down her face. Shepard walked quickly into the room.

"Nadja? What's wrong?" Shepard asked.

"It said it had let me go… I'm lost. Who am I?" Nadja's eyes continued to dart around the room, nervously shaking, but never looking at her father.

A dull feeling filled John as he stared at his daughter, wondering what his options were and how he was going to act in it. The thoughts only lasted a second before he reached into her bed, picking her up and carrying her out of the bed and out of the house. He had to try a doctor, therapist, or just someone who might know more about this situation, though he doubted it.

"That is where I will die…" Nadja just stared up into the sky, tears still streaming down her face.

The doors to the hospital seemed to open too slow as he ran into, his heart pumping the urgency into his system, telling him to hurry and find help immediately.

"Someone help me!" Shepard yelled in the waiting room.

A nurse ran into the room and looked at Nadja, seeing the sweat and the tears, the vacant stare, and the slight murmuring coming from her lips. She quickly pivoted back toward the door, yelling to the doctor.

"Possible amnesia case!"

A doctor and a cart were brought into the waiting room as the nurses took Nadja and put her on the cart. She didn't fight nor did she move much, just staring at the ceiling, tears simply dripping from her eyes.

"Not much time… inevitable… Who?" Nadja questioned ambiguously and continually asked herself as they wheeled her into the back.

Shepard stared at a loss. He felt a relief that what was in her had finally and completely left, as much to his knowledge, but what it had given him he hated. He wondered if this was the price for his daughter's freedom, a forever fractured brain. He quickly jogged over to the phone and called back to the house, hoping to reach Tali and inform her of the news. Instead of getting an answer from the phone, he heard her voice in the room with him.

"John?" Her voice shook with fear and concern. "What is wrong with her now? What did that thing do to her?" Her voice gained a hint of rage. "What did that bosh'tet do to my daughter?" She questioned.

"It left… It left her and left her mind in… I don't know… a confused state." John tried to reason.

"A confused state? What if she never comes back? What if she is never our daughter again because of… of… that thing! Why didn't we try to get rid of him sooner, before all of… this!" Tali's eyes began to turn crumple as she tried to fight back tears. She slammed her fist on a nearby trashcan. "Bosh'tet! That is our daughter Shepard…" Her tone quickly fell to a defeated state. "I just want her back… How much does she know?" A small bit ounce of hope rang through her voice.

Shepard dishearteningly looked down at the floor. "She doesn't even know her name and is stuttering a bunch of strange things…" He answered, knowing the effect of the words.

"No. No. No. No." Each consecutive 'no' became more and more disheartened as she lowered herself down to the ground and sat. "What did she say?"

The words that Shepard knew as the answer were even hard to think about. "That is where I die…" John quoted.

The words hurt Tali more than anything. The valve to her tear ducts simply opened as it just ran from her face. "I want to see her…" She nodded at her decision.

The couple slowly regained some of their composure and walked through the back doors of the emergency room, heading to the room that the nurse had pointed them to. Nadja lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, still looking innocent and perfectly healthy until she opened her mouth. Shepard saw that she was now actually looking at people again instead of a dazed vacant stare into the ceiling. Nurses and doctors were around her, obvious not knowing how to approach it.

"Mr. and Mrs. Shepard. Good to see you. Umm… so your daughter is suffering from what appears to be an acute case of amnesia causing her to lose all sense of who she is. We are still running tests to see what may have been the cause for it and we have her scheduled to have a brain scan to make sure that there wasn't an complications given her unique nature." The doctor explained.

"Unique nature?" Tali questioned.

"Yes. Given her physiology, and her genetic make-up." The doctor looked at Shepard and widened his eyes, getting a better example of what he was trying to get at. "She is much like the Earth Mule. She is a hybrid between human and quarian. This could lead to many complications that are unforeseeable given that this has, as far to our knowledge so far has only happened in you two. No other case of a human and quarian relationship has produced any living offspring, all are either miscarried or die shortly after birth and none have been pretty, scaring many away from trying anymore these days." He went on to explain. "Your daughter lived and has, up to this point lived an exceptionally healthy life and is showing great promise mentally and physically. Even in this early age, we can be sure that she has the ability to have children if she so pleased." He added. "These bouts of amnesia could be her only problem with being set in such a balanced and, I am sorry if this offends, impossible state of which she lives. Given her seven years of age, none of my associates can say how her varying chirality is working or balanced in any reasonable biological means. She is impossible, yet we still have her here, only suffering from amnesia. I am sorry to say that we have no indication as to how to proceed except to wait."

The words hurt them and at the same time, it was the words that they had already heard countless times in the seven years that Nadja had existed. They knew the true reasons as to why Nadja was suffering from what she was now, but they knew that they couldn't tell the doctors as to the cause. The decided it best to wait and to hope that somehow she would improve over the course of however long it took.

"Who am I?" Nadja asked again, vacant of even the tone of wonder; it simply came out as a vacant question.

The question slightly broke Tali's composure as she was forced to bite her lip to not cry. What was going on? She had begun to wonder. She walked to Nadja's side; glad to at least see Nadja had followed her entire trip over though it only hurt her more. The close proximity of her last hospital visit was too much. She had hoped the peace after the first would have lasted longer, but she had found that such a gift was not in the Shadow Broker's forte.

"Who am I?" The repeated question filled the room again.

"Please remember…" Tali almost whispered to Nadja.

"Who am I?" The young quarian asked again.

"Nadja. Please just remember…" Tali cried.

Nadja grew silent as her eyes shut and her head fell to the side. Tali looked up at the doctors and the worry in the room permeated the atmosphere as many of the doctors scanned her.

"All her vitals are normal." One doctor stated.

"Brain scan shows heightened activity… She is dreaming." The second doctor stated.

_Wake up…_

Nadja opened her eyes and looked around the room at all of the strange people hovering over her, scanning her. She jumped and swatted at them to get away from her feeling a slight panic from her loss of location. In the corner of her vision, Nadja managed to catch the image of her mother.

"Mom? Who are these people?" She questioned, climbing slightly up the bed to escape the scans.

In almost a squeal of joy, Tali picked Nadja out of the bed and hoisted her into the air. Tears of joy ran down her face at the change. The doctors all stood staring at the results and the notes. Nothing made sense to them, none of it showed any pattern, no results, yet all of the symptoms were true. Nadja's initial basic brain scans showed lapses in the thought patterns, matching that of amnesia and the mere mention of her actual name from her mother had indeed caused Nadja's brain to shut down and for her to fall into a sleep. The lead doctor looked over the history of the symptoms and saw that all had truly happened and that none of this was some sort of set up.

Tali and John came back together, happiness burned through their eyes, as they laughed with their daughter, simply enjoying this positive moment, no matter how strange and sudden it was.

"We would like to hold your daughter… in case of relapse." The doctor was at a loss of words from the bizarre development in the case.

The reality that such a thing as a relapse could exist, broke the mood and set them back into a more somber mood. None of this felt real.

_Wake up…_

Nadja jumped up in her bed, her eyes wide with fear. She quickly looked around the room and saw that she was back in her room. A nagging feeling began to pull at Nadja's mind as she retraced the last few memories in her head. She wondered how long she had been in the hospital and why she could remember so much about, including the sections where she had been supposedly suffering from amnesia. A dark figure filled her doorway.

"Morning Nadja." Shepard smiled. "Hope you have a great day at school, and make sure that you talk softly, your mother is still suffering from a hangover from last night."

Nadja stared, confused at what she was hearing. "How many days of school have I missed?" Nadja asked.

"If there was a school day during the night than you would have missed a day…" Shepard joked. "Did you really sleep that hard?" He chuckled as he walked down the hall. "I'll have breakfast ready for you."

Nadja rubbed her head and quickly began to realize that everything had been a dream. Nothing made much sense and the reality of the entire dream scared her, but not to the point of paralyzing amnesia. The young quarian slowly rose from her bed and looked around her room. The orange glow of her Omni-tool opened revealing that it was indeed only the next day and that all of the events that she had assumed had occurred had only happened in her head, though a few aspects of the dream lingered in her head.

"This is where I die…" She thought about it. "No… 'That' is where I die." She couldn't piece it together. "Who am I…?" It also felt like a stupid question of which she easily answered. "Strange…"

It took her much longer to get her school robes on than normal as her thoughts continued to question the importance of the dream. To her, all of the events had truly happened, but in reality they didn't. It began to bug and annoy her that she angrily just voided the thoughts and quickly walked to the kitchen knowing that she still had to give that present to him. Shepard sat at the dinner table sipping his regular mug of steaming cooked coffee bean.

"Dad?" Nadja spoke to gain his attention. "It is gone from my mind."

John stared at her, questioningly. "You mean… 'It'?" He asked in almost disbelief if that was truly what she meant.

Nadja only nodded, and grabbed her normal breakfast food. The smile that began to spread across her father's face was easily contagious. As much as she tried to hide it, she found herself grinning more and more.

"How do you know this? Is this true? Is it really gone?" her father had put the mug down on the table and was primed to jump.

"She told me and yes it is true." Nadja spoke, feeling the sadness of her friend vanishing, but that was easily overshadowed by the happiness of seeing her father in such a joyous state.

"Wait till your mother hears about this. Just wait till she hears. Her hangover will be gone faster than you can blink." Shepard chuckled.

Nadja smiled and let the joyousness of the situation cloud over the confusion still left inside of her head. She would deal with it another time.


End file.
